What do you think?
Rate this book
The Inevitable Gift Shop
Poetry Book Society Special Commendation
‘It’s like a conversation with an extraordinarily wise friend: surprising, tender, funny and profound.
– Michelle de Kretser
Subtitled ‘A memoir by other means’, The Inevitable Gift Shop lassoes consciousness, memory, desire, literature, illness, flora and fauna, problems with tortoises and cable ties, and brings them back home in double file, as prose and poetry. ‘This is now, or as good as. / We should welcome it. / There should be hats.’
‘Penetratingly clever and often quite moving and extremely charming, border-crossing uncategorisable writing ... there’s something holistic about it, in the way it enacts the absolute continuity between inner and outer life, what we feel what we think what we do.’
– Patrick McGuinness
‘It takes itself apart and puts itself back together again as it goes along like a literary Transformer, morphing from prose to poetry, literary criticism to history, every new shape a brilliant incarnation ... This is an odd book, no question, one I back to last.’
– Ian Duhig
‘Heartbreaking and hilarious.’
– Ian Sansom
‘If there were rules to writing – which there aren’t, probably – this book is rewriting them … Eaves is cutting an entirely new path, machete in hand, through bush, briar and jungle into uncharted artistic territory … It’s a book that demands to be read and re-read – and then re-read again; both front to back, back to front, and in all other manner of combinations.’
– Nothingintherulebook.com
‘… it’s a mixture of autobiographical anecdotes, poetry, micro-narratives, literary criticism and philosophical musings. In grouping these styles of writing within distinct sections, the book takes on a remarkable fluidity where different parts comment upon each other and a deeper, more complex understanding of a whole life is imaginatively constructed.
The title is a reference to a guide’s remark of a tourist site in Iceland that there is an inevitable gift shop. For me, this image took on significance throughout suggesting that parts of our lives are parcelled up and offered up, but they serve only as imitations of the real thing … an absolutely fascinating, cerebral and original book that raised so many questions for me – not just about the content of what I was reading but how I was reading it.’
– Lonesomereader.com
‘It’s like a conversation with an extraordinarily wise friend: surprising, tender, funny and profound.
– Michelle de Kretser
Subtitled ‘A memoir by other means’, The Inevitable Gift Shop lassoes consciousness, memory, desire, literature, illness, flora and fauna, problems with tortoises and cable ties, and brings them back home in double file, as prose and poetry. ‘This is now, or as good as. / We should welcome it. / There should be hats.’
‘Penetratingly clever and often quite moving and extremely charming, border-crossing uncategorisable writing ... there’s something holistic about it, in the way it enacts the absolute continuity between inner and outer life, what we feel what we think what we do.’
– Patrick McGuinness
‘It takes itself apart and puts itself back together again as it goes along like a literary Transformer, morphing from prose to poetry, literary criticism to history, every new shape a brilliant incarnation ... This is an odd book, no question, one I back to last.’
– Ian Duhig
‘Heartbreaking and hilarious.’
– Ian Sansom
‘If there were rules to writing – which there aren’t, probably – this book is rewriting them … Eaves is cutting an entirely new path, machete in hand, through bush, briar and jungle into uncharted artistic territory … It’s a book that demands to be read and re-read – and then re-read again; both front to back, back to front, and in all other manner of combinations.’
– Nothingintherulebook.com
‘… it’s a mixture of autobiographical anecdotes, poetry, micro-narratives, literary criticism and philosophical musings. In grouping these styles of writing within distinct sections, the book takes on a remarkable fluidity where different parts comment upon each other and a deeper, more complex understanding of a whole life is imaginatively constructed.
The title is a reference to a guide’s remark of a tourist site in Iceland that there is an inevitable gift shop. For me, this image took on significance throughout suggesting that parts of our lives are parcelled up and offered up, but they serve only as imitations of the real thing … an absolutely fascinating, cerebral and original book that raised so many questions for me – not just about the content of what I was reading but how I was reading it.’
– Lonesomereader.com
- GenresPoetry
137 pages, Paperback
First published March 17, 2016
70 people want to read
About the author
Will Eaves
19 books23 followersWill was born in Bath in 1967 and educated at Beechen Cliff School and King’s College, Cambridge.
After a brief spell as an actor and several years in trade journalism, he began writing for the Times Literary Supplement in 1992 and joined the paper as its Arts Editor in 1995. He left in 2011 to become an Associate Professor in the Writing Programme at the University of Warwick.
In 2020, he judged the Goldsmiths Prize and was a Visiting Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford. In 2016, he was a Sassoon Visiting Fellow at the Bodleian Library.
He has written five novels, two books of poetry, and one volume of literary essays, and is represented by Carrie Plitt at Felicity Bryan Associates in Oxford.
He has given talks, seminars and readings around the world: at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Royal Society, the National Geographic Science Festival, the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Shakespeare and Co Bookshop, Medicine Unboxed, Belfast Book Festival, the Goldsmiths Prize Readings, Gay’s The Word Bookshop, Poetry East, the Mildura Writers’ Festival, Vout-O-Reenee‘s, and the University of Melbourne.
He has appeared several times on BBC Radio 3’s The Verb, with Ian Macmillan, and on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week and Open Book. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
He edits mss, grows trees, writes piano music, and lives in Brixton.
After a brief spell as an actor and several years in trade journalism, he began writing for the Times Literary Supplement in 1992 and joined the paper as its Arts Editor in 1995. He left in 2011 to become an Associate Professor in the Writing Programme at the University of Warwick.
In 2020, he judged the Goldsmiths Prize and was a Visiting Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford. In 2016, he was a Sassoon Visiting Fellow at the Bodleian Library.
He has written five novels, two books of poetry, and one volume of literary essays, and is represented by Carrie Plitt at Felicity Bryan Associates in Oxford.
He has given talks, seminars and readings around the world: at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Royal Society, the National Geographic Science Festival, the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Shakespeare and Co Bookshop, Medicine Unboxed, Belfast Book Festival, the Goldsmiths Prize Readings, Gay’s The Word Bookshop, Poetry East, the Mildura Writers’ Festival, Vout-O-Reenee‘s, and the University of Melbourne.
He has appeared several times on BBC Radio 3’s The Verb, with Ian Macmillan, and on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week and Open Book. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
He edits mss, grows trees, writes piano music, and lives in Brixton.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 22, 2019
It is the first book by Will Eaves I’ve read and it is a promising start. The book is a compilation of short writing including poems, the snippets of literary criticism and auto fiction passages. When i was reading it I was thinking about it as a poetry collection. Even the segments written in prose felt like a poetry. Especially when the text would switch from a poem to a prose. I could still feel the rhythm. But after finishing it, I realised that Eaves called it “A memoir by other means”. So for him the autobiographical component was the most important.
His thoughts about other writers were quite entertaining and some of them were profound. He mentions Chaucer, Woolf, Golding, Fathrope and O’Connory. He admires Austen and Flaubert. He contemplates what is good literary translation, how does it feel to write a poem. He does not appreciate the role or “relatibility” to characters as a criteria for judging a book. “ I did not relate to any of the characters” means “I caught sight of my rage in the mirror”. In the wonderful micro-essay on Golding’s Inheritors he explores the writer’s ability to depict non-linearity of the time through the eyes of hominid species and the boundaries of the language: “The source of its (book’s) power is a beautiful paradox: within language he conveys a largely no-linguistic way of relating to nature.” I’ve never wanted to read Golding before knowing the notoriety of “Lord of the flies” and his persona. But Eaves made me to rethink this.
Still, the poems in this book were the best part. Take, for example, 81 Sturla Street with “the violet insect-o-cuter glow of streetlamp on the fallen snow”; Or “The Claim” breaming with the musicality of the language. And then there is the first piece in the VI part. It is a prose, but it reads like a poetry, amazingly harsh and beautiful little tale about archetypical infidelity framed by the voice of its unsuitable teller, a wealthy lawyer, who is like “ginger Tom stuffed into a smaller cat’s stripy shirt”.
His thoughts about other writers were quite entertaining and some of them were profound. He mentions Chaucer, Woolf, Golding, Fathrope and O’Connory. He admires Austen and Flaubert. He contemplates what is good literary translation, how does it feel to write a poem. He does not appreciate the role or “relatibility” to characters as a criteria for judging a book. “ I did not relate to any of the characters” means “I caught sight of my rage in the mirror”. In the wonderful micro-essay on Golding’s Inheritors he explores the writer’s ability to depict non-linearity of the time through the eyes of hominid species and the boundaries of the language: “The source of its (book’s) power is a beautiful paradox: within language he conveys a largely no-linguistic way of relating to nature.” I’ve never wanted to read Golding before knowing the notoriety of “Lord of the flies” and his persona. But Eaves made me to rethink this.
Still, the poems in this book were the best part. Take, for example, 81 Sturla Street with “the violet insect-o-cuter glow of streetlamp on the fallen snow”; Or “The Claim” breaming with the musicality of the language. And then there is the first piece in the VI part. It is a prose, but it reads like a poetry, amazingly harsh and beautiful little tale about archetypical infidelity framed by the voice of its unsuitable teller, a wealthy lawyer, who is like “ginger Tom stuffed into a smaller cat’s stripy shirt”.
November 12, 2023
This book contains three essays and three selections of poetry. Will Eaves is known for his innovative and exploratory style in prose, and I was very impressed by his novel Murmur, about the life of Alan Turing. However, his poetry is not particularly inventive or imaginative, and neither is it sensitive or imagistic, and I found myself quickly tiring of it. Luckily, his three essays, loose meditations on reading, literary criticism, health, travel and the meaning of home, are much more interesting and engaging. He has some really compelling paragraphs, though the essays as a whole don't seem to add up to very much. Interesting, but not at all on the level of Murmur.
September 6, 2016
Our consumption of books teaches us to think about them in neat categories. ‘Fiction’ is in one aisle. ‘Poetry’ in another. ‘Biographies’ and ‘Memoirs’ in another. We like to know what sort of reading experience we’re going to get. So there is something so disarming and refreshing to encounter a book like Will Eaves’ “The Inevitable Gift Shop” which so resolutely denies any kind of categorization. Much of this book feels deeply personal, but it is not confessional in the sense we’ve learned to expect from writers who shape and lay out their lives in a memoir. Rather, it’s a mixture of autobiographical anecdotes, poetry, micro-narratives, literary criticism and philosophical musings. In grouping these styles of writing within distinct sections, the book takes on a remarkable fluidity where different parts comment upon each other and a deeper, more complex understanding of a whole life is imaginatively constructed. In some peculiar way, I finished reading it feeling I knew everything about Will Eaves and nothing about him.
Read my full review of The Inevitable Gift Shop: a memoir by other means by Will Eaves on LonesomeReader
Read my full review of The Inevitable Gift Shop: a memoir by other means by Will Eaves on LonesomeReader
December 10, 2016
This is a book that, if you try to describe, might sound unreadable. Fragmentary prose—a mix of memoir, literary criticism, and anecdotes—combined with poetry. But, like its predecessor, The Absent Therapist, these pieces all come together to create an engaging, entertaining and thoughtful read. My full review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2016/12/09/a-...
April 19, 2018
137 pages from Yale Review, New Yorker, TLS, PN Review, London Magazine, Stand, etc. Sections of poems alternate with sections of fragmentary prose - autobiography, literary criticism, aphorisms and journal entries.
The freedom from the constraints of continuity doesn't always produce text that's bursting with thought-provoking jewels. The following is one fragment - "Never try to please the abstraction of an audience. Write to someone." (p.18) - which sounds as if it's come straight from a how-to-write book. Such fragments are sometimes ignited by later fragments, but not this one. By itself the fragment "the reader who wishes to 'relate', who seeks likeable characters and situations, is barely reading at all" (p.9) doesn't impress either. Nor by itself does "A fictional character isn't real, he's convincing, whereas an actor is both things at once, a real person being convincing" (p.22) but later I realised that it's a summary of some other fragments - I often point out to poets who use "rose" to mean "beauty" that it's a good idea for "rose" to also mean "rose".
In a novel (by Kundera or Julian Barnes, say) such thoughts, boring or not, help readers learn about the main character. Here the main character is the author. To me, the thoughts about automation on p.20 waste a page. The following fragment (especially the dimensions stuff, and "perpetually") means little to me - "I like looking out of windows. Life narrows to a point. Slowly I empty myself into the sea, a curve in at least four dimensions. There is a point to this, and it is a mathematical pattern. The pattern is the porthole mind, the O through which one falls, or pours, perpetually" (p.56). Maybe it's meant to be humourous. I think the following is a joke - "A long medical discussion may easily become an organ recital" (p.53).
His write-ups of subjects show that he's done some (patchy) reading, but his analogies are sometimes unhelpful and his conclusions unsurprising. For example, when writing about consciousness on p.99 the analogy using "keys" doesn't help me, and the fragment ends with "I think that consciousness arises from purely physical processes, but a physicalist description of those processes cannot account for consciousness" (p.99).
That said there are some lively similes - "The huge bottle-brushes span like tireless dervishes, descending on the car, wiping and threatening to wipe out the windscreen" (p.19). I like the tortoise-related material on p.54 - I suspect I would have used it in a story. And there are interesting snippets like "The rebel is an egoist to the point of misanthropy: he wants a following but he doesn't want the inconvenience of followers" (p.23).
He likes William Golding's "The Inheritors", some of UA Fanthorpe's poems, and Chekhov. He comments on several Shakespearean sonnets, pointing out that "In Shakespeare's sonnets one hears the low note and echo of abandonment - by a lover, certainly ... but also by time" (p.106, a page I liked) and "For a sequence with so many startling images, it's odd that so few of the sonnets describe a visual scene" (p.114). Providing insights without rigour, without dealing with opposing views, has a hit-and-run feel though, even when they succeed in illuminating texts.
I don't get most of the poetry. Here are some examples -
* "Which of the psalms will hear the clouds as/ they pass overhead, a stave of wires their nest?/ What makes them beautiful? Why do they tear/ themselves apart like ageing stars or clocks?" (p.74) - the stave of wires are telephone lines? In what way like a nest? Do clouds really tear themselves apart? Do clocks?
* "The agent pales at the window,/ fades into a forest of light// with no access to the particulars/ for living off seeds, small kills,// alone in the out-there-somewhere/ like a call-centre operative on Jupiter" (p.119)
* "The roses accept watering like automatons/ with painful feelings not included in the booklet/ and the wet tiles of the porch get stared at/ by the husband whose wife behind the flyscreen/ keeps a compound eye on his best efforts/ with sprinkler and hose" (p.123)
I like "A Likely Story" and some lines elsewhere - e.g. "Fire whirled the Crystal Palace away/ like a wild waiter harried by debutantes" (p.81).
The freedom from the constraints of continuity doesn't always produce text that's bursting with thought-provoking jewels. The following is one fragment - "Never try to please the abstraction of an audience. Write to someone." (p.18) - which sounds as if it's come straight from a how-to-write book. Such fragments are sometimes ignited by later fragments, but not this one. By itself the fragment "the reader who wishes to 'relate', who seeks likeable characters and situations, is barely reading at all" (p.9) doesn't impress either. Nor by itself does "A fictional character isn't real, he's convincing, whereas an actor is both things at once, a real person being convincing" (p.22) but later I realised that it's a summary of some other fragments - I often point out to poets who use "rose" to mean "beauty" that it's a good idea for "rose" to also mean "rose".
In a novel (by Kundera or Julian Barnes, say) such thoughts, boring or not, help readers learn about the main character. Here the main character is the author. To me, the thoughts about automation on p.20 waste a page. The following fragment (especially the dimensions stuff, and "perpetually") means little to me - "I like looking out of windows. Life narrows to a point. Slowly I empty myself into the sea, a curve in at least four dimensions. There is a point to this, and it is a mathematical pattern. The pattern is the porthole mind, the O through which one falls, or pours, perpetually" (p.56). Maybe it's meant to be humourous. I think the following is a joke - "A long medical discussion may easily become an organ recital" (p.53).
His write-ups of subjects show that he's done some (patchy) reading, but his analogies are sometimes unhelpful and his conclusions unsurprising. For example, when writing about consciousness on p.99 the analogy using "keys" doesn't help me, and the fragment ends with "I think that consciousness arises from purely physical processes, but a physicalist description of those processes cannot account for consciousness" (p.99).
That said there are some lively similes - "The huge bottle-brushes span like tireless dervishes, descending on the car, wiping and threatening to wipe out the windscreen" (p.19). I like the tortoise-related material on p.54 - I suspect I would have used it in a story. And there are interesting snippets like "The rebel is an egoist to the point of misanthropy: he wants a following but he doesn't want the inconvenience of followers" (p.23).
He likes William Golding's "The Inheritors", some of UA Fanthorpe's poems, and Chekhov. He comments on several Shakespearean sonnets, pointing out that "In Shakespeare's sonnets one hears the low note and echo of abandonment - by a lover, certainly ... but also by time" (p.106, a page I liked) and "For a sequence with so many startling images, it's odd that so few of the sonnets describe a visual scene" (p.114). Providing insights without rigour, without dealing with opposing views, has a hit-and-run feel though, even when they succeed in illuminating texts.
I don't get most of the poetry. Here are some examples -
* "Which of the psalms will hear the clouds as/ they pass overhead, a stave of wires their nest?/ What makes them beautiful? Why do they tear/ themselves apart like ageing stars or clocks?" (p.74) - the stave of wires are telephone lines? In what way like a nest? Do clouds really tear themselves apart? Do clocks?
* "The agent pales at the window,/ fades into a forest of light// with no access to the particulars/ for living off seeds, small kills,// alone in the out-there-somewhere/ like a call-centre operative on Jupiter" (p.119)
* "The roses accept watering like automatons/ with painful feelings not included in the booklet/ and the wet tiles of the porch get stared at/ by the husband whose wife behind the flyscreen/ keeps a compound eye on his best efforts/ with sprinkler and hose" (p.123)
I like "A Likely Story" and some lines elsewhere - e.g. "Fire whirled the Crystal Palace away/ like a wild waiter harried by debutantes" (p.81).
April 29, 2016
There's a point where 'This is an odd book' stops being a complaint and becomes praise.
Sections of short prose pieces on everything from the mating habits of the domesticated Tortoise to the problems of translating Flaubert alternate with sections of poems. Eaves thinks about a wide variety of texts and subjects: from Shakespeare's Sonnets, via Old English poems to Flaubert, but in between are observations, comments, descriptions....
The Blurb gets it right: 'It's like a conversation with an extraordinarily wise friend; surprising, tender, funny and profound'. Though if that makes it sound in any way precious it shouldn't.
The title is taken from a comment by a tour guide in a vast greenhouse in Iceland called 'The Garden of Eden'. 'Inside the Garden of Eden you will find the inevitable gift shop'.
The phrase epitomises the way the book juxtaposes its various parts, subject matter and registers.
I've been rereading it, and then rereading it, since it arrived and for me that's the test of a book's quality.
This is an odd book and the most enjoyable new one I've read for a long time.
Sections of short prose pieces on everything from the mating habits of the domesticated Tortoise to the problems of translating Flaubert alternate with sections of poems. Eaves thinks about a wide variety of texts and subjects: from Shakespeare's Sonnets, via Old English poems to Flaubert, but in between are observations, comments, descriptions....
The Blurb gets it right: 'It's like a conversation with an extraordinarily wise friend; surprising, tender, funny and profound'. Though if that makes it sound in any way precious it shouldn't.
The title is taken from a comment by a tour guide in a vast greenhouse in Iceland called 'The Garden of Eden'. 'Inside the Garden of Eden you will find the inevitable gift shop'.
The phrase epitomises the way the book juxtaposes its various parts, subject matter and registers.
I've been rereading it, and then rereading it, since it arrived and for me that's the test of a book's quality.
This is an odd book and the most enjoyable new one I've read for a long time.
April 5, 2017
Loved the book, a mixture of poetry, prose, reflections on life, literary criticism and biography. The author could be that really smart, melancholy friend who you're really fond of and always want to impress. Definitely one to go back to - it isn't possible to take it all in in one go.
June 30, 2017
How infuriating for me and embarrassing for the publisher that such pedantic garbage ever found its way into book form.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews