John     Purcell

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John Purcell

Goodreads Author


Born
Sydney, Australia
Website

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Member Since
June 2010

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John Purcell is the author of five novels, three published under a pseudonym. His most recent novels The Girl on the Page and The Lessons are published by Fourth Estate.

Everything I have done up till now has been research for The Girl on the Page.

The Girl On The Page by John Purcell As we near publication of my new novel, The Girl on the Page, I cannot but stop to wonder where the book came from. I wrote the novel so quickly. It just fell onto the page. Almost as if I had been researching it for years. But I hadn’t. I had just been working away at my day job selling books.

Then it hit me. Rather belatedly, I’ll admit – everything I had done up till now had been research fo Read more of this blog post »
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Published on June 01, 2018 23:05 Tags: books
Average rating: 3.67 · 1,850 ratings · 301 reviews · 2 distinct worksSimilar authors
The Girl on the Page

3.62 avg rating — 1,456 ratings — published 2018 — 12 editions
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The Lessons

3.87 avg rating — 394 ratings4 editions
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* Note: these are all the books on Goodreads for this author. To add more, click here.

Half His Age
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Brawler: Stories
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by Lauren Groff (Goodreads Author)
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The Mother Is Res...
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John’s Recent Updates

John Purcell is currently reading
Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy
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Brawler by Lauren Groff
Brawler: Stories
by Lauren Groff (Goodreads Author)
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John Purcell wants to read
The Sitter by Angela O'Keeffe
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The Mother Is Restless and She Doesn't Know Why by Gemma Parker
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Slip by Abbey Lay
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Glyph by Ali Smith
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John Purcell rated a book it was amazing
Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash
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I received a review copy of Lost Lambs' from the publisher and picked it up on the strength of the cover knowing nothing about the book or the author. It turns out to be a debut, and a brilliant one at that.

Centred on the dysfunctional Flynn family,
...more
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Endling by Maria Reva
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Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy
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The New Investigations of Inspector Maigret by Georges Simenon
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Maigret, Maigret, Maigret. Is this what obsession looks like? Yup.
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Quotes by John Purcell  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“He must fly regularly. I don’t. Not any more. So I have been watching everything with interest. I love to watch people and eavesdrop. I can’t help myself. This scene, with passengers taking their seats and struggling with hand luggage, everyone at cross purposes, is repeated all day on dozens of flights at hundreds of airports and must seem commonplace to those working, but this moment won’t happen again. Not just to me, but to all of us. Life is like that.”
John Purcell, The Lessons

“I have everything written down somewhere. That’s all I have ever done. I record. I take notes. And now, as memory fades, that’s all I have left. I hate growing old. I hate this longing to be something I’m not. The desire to be young again. To relive those years, to do things differently, to write differently. To make amends. I would like never to look back. But it is all I seem capable of doing these days.”
John Purcell, The Lessons

“Of course I adopted a positive outlook. When in Rome. Besides, pessimism made one a pariah. Sarcasm was outlawed, irony unknown. If one couldn’t afford two cars, a pool, three bathrooms, and a television in every room, at least one could have an indefatigably positive outlook. It was a free country, after all. But somehow my optimism always struck the
wrong note.”
John Purcell, The Lessons

Topics Mentioning This Author

“What do we usually mean by "literature"? A world of rhetoric, triteness, rounded phrases and respectable names, of people who have looked at life when they were young but who, once they have achieved fame, confine themselves to abstractions, to rehashing & to cautious common sense.”
Boris Pasternak, An Essay in Autobioghaphy

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message 1: by Tim

Tim Armstrong you back in Oz ya old bugger? where's the next book? and I hope you're well - in that order! T


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