The other side of the fire

by Alice Thomas Ellis

Shipped from UK, please allow 10 to 21 business days for arrival. Very Good, 1st Edition. 156 p. Very good clean tight sound square, no bookplate, inscription or marks of any kind. Bound in very good bright gilt lettered green cloth together with very good price-clipped original coloured portrait pictorial dustwrapper, featuring an enlargment of a minature Rennaisance painting' Unknown Man Against a Background of Flames', the 6cm original in the Victoria and Albert Museum. A lovely 1st Editon by the great Alis Thomas Ellis, described by The Sunday Times as 'An Entirely Distinctive Voice'.

Genres: Fiction, Humor, British Literature

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Alice Thomas Ellis was short-listed for the Booker prize for The 27th Kingdom. She is the author of A Welsh Childhood (autobiography), Fairy Tale and several other novels including The Summerhouse Trilogy, made into a movie starring Jeanne Moreau and Joan Plowright.

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like Ellis' writing. Her stories seem to be about non-events going nowhere in particular...with laugh-out-loud gems like this:

"Sylvie always jumped when the telephone rang, as though an unseen lunatic had suddenly screamed in her ear. Consequently whenever she picked it up she sounded slightly hostile."

And gems like this...which seems as true today as when the book was published 30 years ago:

"Sylvie wondered what had happened to the permissive and loose-living young. All the ones she'd met recently were dauntingly moralistic. They ate Health Foods, and while, admittedly, they didn't get married much they paired off very early and stayed together for ages and ages. They made her feel immature, an axolotl."

[Fiona · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book is like eating a packet of space candy. It crackles with wit all the way through, it's fun and it makes you laugh. It's not great literature but it's whacky, off the wall and a good read. I love the faux-Scottish romantic novel one of the characters is writing - "Morning broke with a sullen gleam o'er the craggy battlements of the Laird's awe-inspiring castle....A braw piper in kilt, plaid and bonnet prowled the dark mist beneath the bleak walls." The female characters are hilarious but particularly Gloria, half-collie, half-Alsatian, who spends her time eating the contents of bins. Highly recommended for sheer silliness.

[Terry Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alice Thomas Ellis's books are always full of wry humour and wit and this one is no exception.They make me smile and chuckle at times and I am constantly shaking my head at the pompous and put down comments about others who are not on the same level in society as the main character. They're always good fun.

[Susan Kavanagh · Rating 4 out of 5]

More of a 3.7.. Witty, insightful and funny.

[Mizzo73 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I particularly enjoyed the potboiler novel within this novel "A Grope in the Heather".

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book within a book was brilliant.

[Simon S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed that.

Claudia realises she is falling in love with her stepson, and is both horrified and excited by the possibilities.

With her usual acuity Alice Thomas Ellis laces this short, deceptively light, tale with line after line of witty barbs, exploring relationships between women and their friends, their daughters, sons, mothers, and husbands.

The characters are swiftly and well drawn, and each has their own distinct voice - which can be quite rare in comic novels.

I had to stop myself just posting great swathes of it on Twitter, it’s so damn quotable:

“In Evvie’s view men were a nuisance with more or less nothing to be said for them.”

“True, she suspected, Charles, unlike most women, believed in the vaginal orgasm while refusing to credit the existence of the Loch Ness monster - but then so did most men, in her experience.”

“An idea conceived in drunkenness, considered in sobriety and found reasonable will, when the thinker is next drunk, have taken on something of the force of prophecy.”

Not a classic by any means, but I’m always delighted to spend time inside an Alice Thomas Ellis book.

[Louise Culmer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Claudia is a bored housewife who is in love with her handsome stepson. Her friend Sylvia is divorced and doesn’t seem to do anything at all. Sylvia’s daughter Evvie is writing a romantic novel. Nothing much happens and the characters are all rather tiresome. I kept hoping something interesting would happen but it never does. The only good thing about this novel is that it is very short.

[Bea De · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the writing style and the great sense of humor of the author.Some good character studies and a story about having all material things we need but still getting played by the silly game of musical chairs that falling in love can often be..I really enjoyed this book.

[kymdotcom · Rating 4 out of 5]

This woman is awe inspiringly depressing with a hatred of matrimony that makes one inherently despise all who are so foolish.Including the author.