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Clare Morrall

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Clare Morrall

Goodreads Author


Born
Birmingham
Member Since
August 2020


Man Booker Prize shortlisted Clare Morrall shot to fame in a true to life rags-to-riches story when her novel ‘Astonishing Splashes of Colour’ and her tiny, unknown publisher became front page news after the shortlisting. Later novels have featured on TV Book Club, Front Row and Woman’s Hour on Radio Four and Radio Three, along with the sale of film and foreign rights. She has been awarded an honorary Doctorate for Literature by Birmingham University and is a regular judge for the Rubery Book Award.

Based in Birmingham where she continues to teach music, she originally grew up in Devon. Her adult daughters are also novelists. Alex Morrall’s ‘Helen and the Grandbees’ is due for publication in 2020. Heather Morrall writes teenage novels. Clare
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Average rating: 3.55 · 5,919 ratings · 769 reviews · 22 distinct worksSimilar authors
Astonishing Splashes of Colour

3.65 avg rating — 2,206 ratings — published 2003
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When the Floods Came

3.38 avg rating — 1,140 ratings — published 2016 — 9 editions
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The Man Who Disappeared

3.30 avg rating — 820 ratings — published 2010 — 11 editions
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Natural Flights of the Huma...

3.78 avg rating — 472 ratings — published 2006 — 18 editions
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The Language of Others

3.76 avg rating — 404 ratings — published 2008 — 13 editions
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The Last of the Greenwoods

3.48 avg rating — 343 ratings — published 2018 — 6 editions
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The Roundabout Man

3.51 avg rating — 339 ratings — published 2012 — 10 editions
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After the Bombing

3.53 avg rating — 203 ratings — published 2014 — 9 editions
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The Museum of Diaries

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3.33 avg rating — 6 ratings2 editions
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Astonishing Splashes of Col...

3.75 avg rating — 4 ratings
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More books by Clare Morrall…

Booker Prize Party - by Alex Morrall

I can’t think of many people who would say, when invited to the event of their lives, “can I bring my two grownup daughters too, please?” but that was pretty much what my mum, Clare Morrall did when in 2003 she was unexpectedly shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Astonishing Splashes of Colour from a tiny imprint with a Birmingham publisher. She took us to the Booker Gala, that year held under th Read more of this blog post »
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Published on November 20, 2020 03:23
Quotes by Clare Morrall  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“Maybe this is a characteristic of happy people. An ability to be entertained by the world.”
Clare Morrall, The Language of Others

“We sit together in silence for a while. This is what I have always liked about James. We can make a good silence together. There's something between us that doesn't need words or actions. It settles around us and I can feel it now, hovering gently, ready to wrap me in its nebulous folds, like a delicate lace shawl. I want it to be like this always, something inside us meeting and holding hands, something calm and soothing and healing.”
Clare Morrall, Astonishing Splashes of Colour

“I exist in the eye of the storm, the calm in the centre of a perpetual hurricane of cars and lorries heading for the M6, the north and Scotland, or south to Penzance and Land’s End. I sometimes wonder if they don’t go on the motorway at all, that I hear the same vehicles circling endlessly, a kind of multiple Flying Dutchman, doomed to travel for ever. I don’t regret for one minute that I am no longer one of them.”
Clare Morrall, The Roundabout Man

Polls

What would you like to discuss in December? (Read by Dec 1st)
Please do not vote unless you will return if your book wins.

The Hunger by Alma Katsu
2018, 376 pages, 3.64 stars
Kindle $8.99, used print starting at $9.30, at library

"Evil is invisible, and it is everywhere.

Tamsen Donner must be a witch. That is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the wagon train known as the Donner Party. Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy have driven the pioneers to the brink of madness. They cannot escape the feeling that someone--or something--is stalking them. Whether it was a curse from the beautiful Tamsen, the choice to follow a disastrous experimental route West, or just plain bad luck--the 90 men, women, and children of the Donner Party are at the brink of one of the deadliest and most disastrous western adventures in American history.

While the ill-fated group struggles to survive in the treacherous mountain conditions--searing heat that turns the sand into bubbling stew; snows that freeze the oxen where they stand--evil begins to grow around them, and within them. As members of the party begin to disappear, they must ask themselves "What if there is something waiting in the mountains? Something disturbing and diseased...and very hungry?"


 
  11 votes, 44.0%

Stranded by Bracken MacLeod
2016, 304 pages, 3.46 stars
Kindle $7.99, cheap used print, probably not at library

"In the spirit of John Carpenter's The Thing and Jacob's Ladder comes a terrifying, icebound thriller where nothing is quite what it seems.

Badly battered by an apocalyptic storm, the crew of the Arctic Promise find themselves in increasingly dire circumstances as they sail blindly into unfamiliar waters and an ominously thickening fog. Without functioning navigation or communication equipment, they are lost and completely alone. One by one, the men fall prey to a mysterious illness. Deckhand Noah Cabot is the only person unaffected by the strange force plaguing the ship and her crew, which does little to ease their growing distrust of him.

Dismissing Noah's warnings of worsening conditions, the captain of the ship presses on until the sea freezes into ice and they can go no farther. When the men are ordered overboard in an attempt to break the ship free by hand, the fog clears, revealing a faint shape in the distance that may or may not be their destination. Noah leads the last of the able-bodied crew on a journey across the ice and into an uncertain future where they must fight for their lives against the elements, the ghosts of the past and, ultimately, themselves."


 
  6 votes, 24.0%

When the Floods Came by Clare Morrall
2016, 352 pages, 3.4 stars
Kindle $7.31, cheap used print, at library

"A taut, gripping novel set in the future, when the lives of a family existing on the margins of a dramatically changed society are upset by a mysterious stranger.
In a world prone to violent flooding, Britain, ravaged 20 years earlier by a deadly virus, has been largely cut off from the rest of the world. Survivors are few and far between, most of them infertile. Children, the only hope for the future, are a rare commodity.

For 22-year-old Roza Polanski, life with her family in their isolated tower block is relatively comfortable. She's safe, happy enough. But when a stranger called Aashay Kent arrives, everything changes. At first he's a welcome addition, his magnetism drawing the Polanskis out of their shells, promising an alternative to a lonely existence. But Roza can't shake the feeling that there's more to Aashay than he's letting on. Is there more to life beyond their isolated bubble? Is it true that children are being kidnapped? And what will it cost to find out?

Clare Morrall, author of the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted Astonishing Splashes of Colour, creates a startling vision of the future in a world not so very far from our own, and a thrilling story of suspense."


 
  5 votes, 20.0%

When Worlds Collide by Philip Wylie
1999, 382 pages, 3.91 stars
Kindle $11.99, cheap used print, at library

"A runaway planet hurtles toward the earth. As it draws near, massive tidal waves, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions wrack our planet, devastating continents, drowning cities, and wiping out millions. In central North America, a team of scientists race to build a spacecraft powerful enough to escape the doomed earth. Their greatest threat, they soon discover, comes not from the skies but from other humans. A crackling plot and sizzling, cataclysmic vision have made When Worlds Collide one of the most popular and influential end-of-the-world novels of all time."


 
  3 votes, 12.0%

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