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Bleaker House: Chasing My Novel to the End of the World
When she was twenty-seven, Nell Stevens—a lifelong aspiring novelist—won an all-expenses-paid fellowship to go anywhere in the world to write. Would she choose a glittering metropolis, a romantic village, an exotic paradise? Not exactly. Nell picked Bleaker Island, a snowy, windswept pile of rock in the Falklands. Other than sheep, penguins, paranoia, and the weather, there aren’t many distractions, but as Nell soon discovers, total isolation and 1,085 calories a day are far from ideal conditions for literary production. With deft humor, this memoir traces her island days and slowly reveals the life and people she has left behind in pursuit of her writing. It seems that there is nowhere she can run—an island or the pages of her notebook—to escape the big questions of love, art, and, ambition.
256 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 14, 2017
101 people are currently reading
4229 people want to read
About the author
Nell Stevens
12 books312 followersNell Stevens writes memoir and fiction. She is the author of Bleaker House and Mrs Gaskell & Me (UK) / The Victorian & the Romantic (US/CAN), which won the 2019 Somerset Maugham Award. She was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award, 2018. Her writing is published in The New York Times, Vogue, The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Granta and elsewhere. Nell is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Warwick.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 343 reviews
March 16, 2017
Offered an amazing opportunity to travel anywhere, spend time writing, Neil chooses the Falklands. This setting the attraction for me in wanting to read this book. A place I have not read much about, a place of solitude, few people and a somewhat intimidating landscape. Seemed to have read several books on this theme lately, wonder if my subconscious is trying to tell me something. Not surprisingly the parts where here time on the island was discussed, the penguins the birds, the snow and cold, were my favorites.
I do think budding authors, those with a creative spirit would have been more attuned than I was to the stories of her background, creative musings, and her novel attempts. For me they were a distraction, an interruption to the parts I found of interest. So a mixed read but well written and somewhat enjoyable.
ARC from publisher.
I do think budding authors, those with a creative spirit would have been more attuned than I was to the stories of her background, creative musings, and her novel attempts. For me they were a distraction, an interruption to the parts I found of interest. So a mixed read but well written and somewhat enjoyable.
ARC from publisher.
May 16, 2018
My reaction to Bleaker House is somewhat bewildering even to myself. On the one hand, it raised a lot of questions and provoked a lot of thoughts in me, and I have to respect that. On the other hand, I tend to like books that have some kind of emotional impact, and the emotional impact of this one was close to zero. Even having pondered it for a while, I'm torn on what this book's ultimate value might be.
As Nell Stevens is finishing her MFA at Boston University, she becomes the recipient of a generous fellowship: She can live anywhere she wants for three months, with all expenses paid. The idea is to give newly graduated writers an opportunity to see the world and expand their horizons, while also having some uninterrupted time to write. Nell chooses to go to Bleaker Island in the Falklands, close to the South Pole, in winter, when almost no one else will be around. She will live in someone's guest house, with only sheep and birds for company, and severely ration her food intake because of weight limits on how much she can bring with her. There, she will write a novel without interruption. This entire scenario raises some questions.
Q: Nell Stevens, you could have gone anywhere in the world. Why on earth would you choose a place like Bleaker Island? I'm not saying you need to be a social butterfly—most writers aren't—but wouldn't your work benefit from being around other people, even casually? How can you possibly write authentic work if you're completely isolated?
A: Actually, Stevens does explain why she thinks going to Bleaker Island will benefit her work, although it's a rather flimsy explanation. More importantly, as the book goes on she explores more deeply why she chose to do this, and every question I might ask of her she also asks of herself. This level of self-awareness is a relief, and by the end she's reached some interesting, and even unexpected, conclusions.
Q: Nell Stevens, part of the point of this memoir is to explore how you went to Bleaker Island to write a novel, but were unable to write a novel to your own satisfaction. With all due respect, why should the reader care about this? You were unable to write a novel before you came to Bleaker Island, and when you got to Bleaker Island, nothing changed. If someone like Joyce Carol Oates went to Bleaker Island and was unable to write a novel, that would be worth remarking on, and possibly writing a memoir about. But, no offense, why is this a good idea for someone like you?
A: This is a good question, and the only answer I can give is that reading the memoir parts of this book reveals that Nell Stevens really can write, when she's writing about herself. The parts about her life on Bleaker, and how she ended up there, are really good—entertaining, amusing, introspective but with a light touch. Despite my skepticism, she ended up being very good company, and in writing that's harder to pull off than it looks. Less enjoyable were the fiction elements of the book—portions of the novel she's trying to write on the island, as well as three short stories she wrote for her MFA program, which are included in their entirety.
Q: Nell Stevens, that brings me to another good question. The memoir elements of your book are quite good. Why does your fiction ring so false?
A: This question is impossible to answer at this point; Nell Stevens was only 27 years old when the events of this book took place, and she was even younger when she wrote the short stories included here. It's possible that her fiction is not great because she's still a beginning writer. It's also possible that her fiction is not great because she doesn't have an aptitude for it. Right now it's impossible to know for sure, so including the fiction excerpts doesn't tell us very much. In particular, the three short stories have little bearing on the proceedings and seem like filler. On the other hand, I wouldn't have minded reading more excerpts from the novel she was writing on Bleaker Island—not because these excerpts are particularly good, but because they add depth to the real story, that is, the story of Nell Stevens on a deserted island trying to write a novel.
Q: So, Nell Stevens, what comes next? Will you keep trying to write a novel?
A: This is something I'd really like to know. Has Nell's experience on Bleaker Island made her give up on fiction, or is she going to keep working at it? And would I buy and read a novel by her? I don't know that either. Maybe 20 years from now I would; assuming she works at her craft that whole time, her fiction might be fantastic by then. Or maybe she should just stick to memoir. In fact, a quick Goodreads search reveals that her next book is another memoir. I'm much more inclined to read that. But if she never writes fiction again, was there really a point to this whole exercise?
Q: So would I recommend this book to anyone?
A: I don't know? If you're curious about life on a desolate island in the middle of winter and are interested in a brand-new writer's thoughts on the creative process, then sure, give this a try. If you don't fit that description, it's hard to say you'll be missing anything by skipping Bleaker Island.
I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway. Thank you to the publisher.
As Nell Stevens is finishing her MFA at Boston University, she becomes the recipient of a generous fellowship: She can live anywhere she wants for three months, with all expenses paid. The idea is to give newly graduated writers an opportunity to see the world and expand their horizons, while also having some uninterrupted time to write. Nell chooses to go to Bleaker Island in the Falklands, close to the South Pole, in winter, when almost no one else will be around. She will live in someone's guest house, with only sheep and birds for company, and severely ration her food intake because of weight limits on how much she can bring with her. There, she will write a novel without interruption. This entire scenario raises some questions.
Q: Nell Stevens, you could have gone anywhere in the world. Why on earth would you choose a place like Bleaker Island? I'm not saying you need to be a social butterfly—most writers aren't—but wouldn't your work benefit from being around other people, even casually? How can you possibly write authentic work if you're completely isolated?
A: Actually, Stevens does explain why she thinks going to Bleaker Island will benefit her work, although it's a rather flimsy explanation. More importantly, as the book goes on she explores more deeply why she chose to do this, and every question I might ask of her she also asks of herself. This level of self-awareness is a relief, and by the end she's reached some interesting, and even unexpected, conclusions.
Q: Nell Stevens, part of the point of this memoir is to explore how you went to Bleaker Island to write a novel, but were unable to write a novel to your own satisfaction. With all due respect, why should the reader care about this? You were unable to write a novel before you came to Bleaker Island, and when you got to Bleaker Island, nothing changed. If someone like Joyce Carol Oates went to Bleaker Island and was unable to write a novel, that would be worth remarking on, and possibly writing a memoir about. But, no offense, why is this a good idea for someone like you?
A: This is a good question, and the only answer I can give is that reading the memoir parts of this book reveals that Nell Stevens really can write, when she's writing about herself. The parts about her life on Bleaker, and how she ended up there, are really good—entertaining, amusing, introspective but with a light touch. Despite my skepticism, she ended up being very good company, and in writing that's harder to pull off than it looks. Less enjoyable were the fiction elements of the book—portions of the novel she's trying to write on the island, as well as three short stories she wrote for her MFA program, which are included in their entirety.
Q: Nell Stevens, that brings me to another good question. The memoir elements of your book are quite good. Why does your fiction ring so false?
A: This question is impossible to answer at this point; Nell Stevens was only 27 years old when the events of this book took place, and she was even younger when she wrote the short stories included here. It's possible that her fiction is not great because she's still a beginning writer. It's also possible that her fiction is not great because she doesn't have an aptitude for it. Right now it's impossible to know for sure, so including the fiction excerpts doesn't tell us very much. In particular, the three short stories have little bearing on the proceedings and seem like filler. On the other hand, I wouldn't have minded reading more excerpts from the novel she was writing on Bleaker Island—not because these excerpts are particularly good, but because they add depth to the real story, that is, the story of Nell Stevens on a deserted island trying to write a novel.
Q: So, Nell Stevens, what comes next? Will you keep trying to write a novel?
A: This is something I'd really like to know. Has Nell's experience on Bleaker Island made her give up on fiction, or is she going to keep working at it? And would I buy and read a novel by her? I don't know that either. Maybe 20 years from now I would; assuming she works at her craft that whole time, her fiction might be fantastic by then. Or maybe she should just stick to memoir. In fact, a quick Goodreads search reveals that her next book is another memoir. I'm much more inclined to read that. But if she never writes fiction again, was there really a point to this whole exercise?
Q: So would I recommend this book to anyone?
A: I don't know? If you're curious about life on a desolate island in the middle of winter and are interested in a brand-new writer's thoughts on the creative process, then sure, give this a try. If you don't fit that description, it's hard to say you'll be missing anything by skipping Bleaker Island.
I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway. Thank you to the publisher.
February 8, 2017
Like the Charlie Kaufman film Adaptation or Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage, this is about trying but failing to write the project one has set for oneself – but documenting the journey anyway. Nell Stevens, an aspiring author from England, completed an MFA in creative writing at Boston University and then used her Global Fellowship in Fiction to travel to a location of her choice for three months to write her debut novel. She wanted to go somewhere obscure that had never really been the subject of fiction before, so she decided on the Falkland Islands. Specifically, after a few weeks of finding her feet at a larger outpost, she would be based on the virtually uninhabited Bleaker Island.
It should have been a perfect place to put solitude to good use and produce a novel within a matter of weeks, but things didn’t quite turn out that way. Interspersed with passages about Stevens’s experience on the Falklands are excerpts from her novel-in-progress, in which Oliver Newman, an Oxford PhD candidate, receives a letter from the Falkland Islands telling him to travel there for news about his father, whom he’d long thought dead. This plus three of Stevens’s early short stories – one about a personal assistant who accompanies her boss to Hong Kong, one that appears to be about the death of Amy Winehouse, and one about a student discovering her teacher’s secret life of passion – are printed in a different font to differentiate them from the memoir chapters.
However, the variety of forms still makes this a slightly disorienting reading experience. You’re never quite sure what Stevens is writing, but that’s deliberate; she wasn’t sure what she was writing either, or at least not until just before she left. Despite a careful plan for each day’s word count and calories (she had to bring all of her food with her; the island had no shops), she’d failed to write fiction she could feel proud of. “There is no finished novel. Instead there is this strange, surprising, amorphous thing, this other kind of story I have accidentally, fragmentary told. … The punchline is that I did leave the island with a book.”
I liked the atmosphere of the book: the claustrophobia and bleak physical terrain of the islands where Stevens spends time; the enforced solitude and attention (unreliable Internet access and only one film on her laptop) that failed to have the desired motivating effect. The thought of her unfinished novel made me gloomy, but it was simultaneously heartening to think that the whole experience hadn’t been wasted. The short stories, though, definitely feel out of place and their inclusion struck me as indulgent. I’d recommend this not to general memoir readers but to struggling writers, who will surely recognize their own feelings here.
It should have been a perfect place to put solitude to good use and produce a novel within a matter of weeks, but things didn’t quite turn out that way. Interspersed with passages about Stevens’s experience on the Falklands are excerpts from her novel-in-progress, in which Oliver Newman, an Oxford PhD candidate, receives a letter from the Falkland Islands telling him to travel there for news about his father, whom he’d long thought dead. This plus three of Stevens’s early short stories – one about a personal assistant who accompanies her boss to Hong Kong, one that appears to be about the death of Amy Winehouse, and one about a student discovering her teacher’s secret life of passion – are printed in a different font to differentiate them from the memoir chapters.
However, the variety of forms still makes this a slightly disorienting reading experience. You’re never quite sure what Stevens is writing, but that’s deliberate; she wasn’t sure what she was writing either, or at least not until just before she left. Despite a careful plan for each day’s word count and calories (she had to bring all of her food with her; the island had no shops), she’d failed to write fiction she could feel proud of. “There is no finished novel. Instead there is this strange, surprising, amorphous thing, this other kind of story I have accidentally, fragmentary told. … The punchline is that I did leave the island with a book.”
I liked the atmosphere of the book: the claustrophobia and bleak physical terrain of the islands where Stevens spends time; the enforced solitude and attention (unreliable Internet access and only one film on her laptop) that failed to have the desired motivating effect. The thought of her unfinished novel made me gloomy, but it was simultaneously heartening to think that the whole experience hadn’t been wasted. The short stories, though, definitely feel out of place and their inclusion struck me as indulgent. I’d recommend this not to general memoir readers but to struggling writers, who will surely recognize their own feelings here.
September 7, 2023
What a glorious book – powerful, funny, though-provoking, surprising, delightful and a bit odd in all the best ways. I adored it.
May 15, 2021
An interesting concept, and I loved reading about the Falkland Islands, but instead of feeling like an intentional mix of fiction and nonfiction, it came across like a quilt made out of scraps of the novel the author did not finish, fictionalizations of pieces of the author's life that she didn't want to own, and bits of memoir of time spent on a remote island - a place that the author strangely romanticized and envisioned as a hub of pure, untainted concentration when it was really just a cold, isolated hellhole (as everyone told her it would be). She's a beautiful writer, but this was the definition of navel-gazing and reading it felt like as much of a waste of time as her time spent on Bleaker Island.
December 1, 2016
First up, I feel like I owe this book an apology: I have been really super distractible with anxiety since the election, and I can basically only stand to read escapist type stuff. But I received a galley of this from NetGalley, and the review has a due date, etc.
I think I expected a little more humor, maybe some goofy penguins, and a little more madcap adventure from this. Instead, it's fairly serious in tone, VERY introspective and navel-gazey, and not a little hand-wringy.
In other words: the premise seemed fun, but the execution wasn't really.
Side rant: I wanted to literally throttle the author for her choice to bring so little food. I mean COME ON: don't we all know that the average human is supposed to consume around 2,000 calories per day? Isn't this common knowledge? But somehow she totals up her allowance of dehydrated soup packets and raisins and decides that 1,085 calories seems a-ok. WTAF. She's not going to the Falklands to lose weight; she's going to write a goddamn novel. She travels thousands of miles to a deserted island so that she can *concentrate* on writing and then decides that starvation seems like a wise choice. JUST WHYYYYYYYYYYY?! I get that there was a weight limit, but the answer was BRING FEWER NON-EDIBLE ITEMS.
Ok, so I'm a food focused person and this made me absolutely crazy, obvs. ANYWAY.
I also found myself annoyed with the format of the book - I was expecting straight memoir, but there are short stories, bits of the novel she's working on, and yet other memoir-y type chapters of other time periods in her life interwoven with the book about Bleaker. I mean, I guess it would have been boring without them? But I found myself annoyed at the start of each chapter if it wasn't what I was expecting. (Part of this could have been the ebook format, which makes it harder to flip forward to see how many pages each diversion was going to be - this would have been much easier in print and/or in a book with an index/workable TOC, which are not typically in galleys).
So. Yeah. I wasn't really in the mood. I found the pacing difficult. The FOOD THING WHY. I didn't find the narrator very sympathetic, but I'm trying really hard not to make that a thing I care about but, I'm finding it harder to do so in non-fiction. I didn't hate it, but I really didn't look forward to picking it up, particularly once past the halfway mark. Maybe at another time in my life I would have enjoyed it more, but here we are.
MOAR PENGUINS.
I think I expected a little more humor, maybe some goofy penguins, and a little more madcap adventure from this. Instead, it's fairly serious in tone, VERY introspective and navel-gazey, and not a little hand-wringy.
In other words: the premise seemed fun, but the execution wasn't really.
Side rant: I wanted to literally throttle the author for her choice to bring so little food. I mean COME ON: don't we all know that the average human is supposed to consume around 2,000 calories per day? Isn't this common knowledge? But somehow she totals up her allowance of dehydrated soup packets and raisins and decides that 1,085 calories seems a-ok. WTAF. She's not going to the Falklands to lose weight; she's going to write a goddamn novel. She travels thousands of miles to a deserted island so that she can *concentrate* on writing and then decides that starvation seems like a wise choice. JUST WHYYYYYYYYYYY?! I get that there was a weight limit, but the answer was BRING FEWER NON-EDIBLE ITEMS.
Ok, so I'm a food focused person and this made me absolutely crazy, obvs. ANYWAY.
I also found myself annoyed with the format of the book - I was expecting straight memoir, but there are short stories, bits of the novel she's working on, and yet other memoir-y type chapters of other time periods in her life interwoven with the book about Bleaker. I mean, I guess it would have been boring without them? But I found myself annoyed at the start of each chapter if it wasn't what I was expecting. (Part of this could have been the ebook format, which makes it harder to flip forward to see how many pages each diversion was going to be - this would have been much easier in print and/or in a book with an index/workable TOC, which are not typically in galleys).
So. Yeah. I wasn't really in the mood. I found the pacing difficult. The FOOD THING WHY. I didn't find the narrator very sympathetic, but I'm trying really hard not to make that a thing I care about but, I'm finding it harder to do so in non-fiction. I didn't hate it, but I really didn't look forward to picking it up, particularly once past the halfway mark. Maybe at another time in my life I would have enjoyed it more, but here we are.
MOAR PENGUINS.
Read
November 17, 2016I’ve had a lot of other reading to do this month, but this book was one of those where you pick it up just to check it out…and suddenly you’re a hundred pages in. It’s a memoir about Nell Stevens and her brilliant and insane plan to go live in Bleaker Island, in the Falklands (population: Penguins.) (and maybe some people) where she will focus entirely on writing her novel. Except that it isn’t quite that easy, because books don’t write themselves, even in isolation, and the island is such an adventure all on its own. Stevens’ writing is very clever, and hilarious, and I related entirely to a lot of her concerns and thoughts about life and writing. I also read the book deeply envious, because dammit, I want to rush off to the Falkland islands or somewhere and write a book in a bizarre location. Like Thoreau’s Walden, but with penguins and no power.
— Peter Damien
from The Best Books We Read In October 2016: http://bookriot.com/2016/10/31/riot-r...
— Peter Damien
from The Best Books We Read In October 2016: http://bookriot.com/2016/10/31/riot-r...
July 3, 2017
It's a fun premise for a story: Nell Stevens is a wonderful writer but nothing happens in her stories, so she decides to travel to what is almost literally the ends of the earth to write. Ironically, while she is there, alone on one of the Falkland Islands, nothing happens to her, and her novel goes nowhere, and she decides to write an account of her time in the Falkland Islands, where nothing happened. What is the result? This book, beautifully written (because she is a wonderful writer) but it's a story she has to pad by including the novel she tried to write, a story she wrote earlier in her life, and little stories about other events in her life. It is fine writing but my advice to you, Nell? People really want things to happen in the stories they read. Next time, perhaps, you should travel to a busier spot?
June 30, 2017
I really wanted to like this book. A memoir about an aspiring novelist, a unique setting, the cute penguin on the cover, and come on - the book was called Bleaker House! So good. But it just didn't work for me. The small sections of fiction interspersed throughout made it seem like this "memoir" was an excuse to publish some unpublished (and/or unfinished) writing. I put the book down about halfway through.
February 27, 2018
Meh. I kept waiting for something to happen. Nothing to see here but navel gazing.
February 10, 2018
All over the place—anguish on the island trying to write the novel, fragments of the unfinished novel itself, details of the author's life sometimes interesting other times not—but funny, insightful and enjoyable enough when it is these things to be worth the journey :)
December 31, 2020
You've heard, I'm sure, of the distinction between "street smarts" and "book smarts", which presupposes that someone who reads a lot or is good at math or whatever has absolutely zero common sense. Aside from the fact that it all depends on what books you're reading – and sidestepping a lengthy side discussion about why a certain brand of heartland Republicans seem to think education is bad … this book kind of exemplifies this. Nell Stevens is obviously very book smart – but the fact that she actually survived this project she describes surprises me deeply.
Now, I've often thought that if I could only have a substantial chunk of time to myself, with no mundane work-sleep schedule to adhere to (meaning enough money to live for a few weeks or months or whatever without working), I could absolutely finish my book. (The times I've been unemployed don't count, because the time needed for job-hunting and the substantial stress of being unemployed undid the benefits of having free time.) (That's my story, anyway.) It worked for another Nell, after all - Nelle Harper Lee, that is; her friends gave her an amazing gift of time, and I think it could be said she used it well. So it's not completely ridiculous that Nell Stevens decided that what she needed in order to write her novel was three months, completely alone, on an island in the Falklands, about as close as you can get to absolutely zero distractions.
Except it is completely ridiculous.
She plans it out meticulously. She can only bring so much baggage with her, so she organizes reading matter, clothing – and food, because this island she is going to is uninhabited for most of the year – like the time of year she will be going (winter, inexplicably) – and the only food she will have is what she brings with her. And here's where her lack of "street smarts" becomes dismayingly obvious. She counts every raisin. "It works out that I will eat 1,085 calories per day", she says.
Per WebMD.com, it's recommended that a woman aged 19-30 take in 2000 calories if sedentary, 2000-2200 if moderately active, and 2400 if active. And Ms. Stevens is very active during her time on this island, walking what must be miles per day. I didn't make note of how much weight she discovered she had lost when she got home after the adventure – I mean, on Survivor they tend to lose about 10% of their starting weight, and that's only 40 days, with some of those days being much more sedentary than others – but after only a few days even she recognizes that starvation does not lead to clear thought, and when higher brain functions are impaired it's hard to write a novel.
So it's not surprising that at the end of the quarter she does not have a novel completed. What she ends up with is Bleaker House, a sort of memoir/travelogue/picaresque story of her isolation and hunger, and how she handled it. And seagulls. All this is intercut with sketches from the novel-that-never-was, which seem to be well-written and have some life to them … but I can see how it died on the vine.
In the Goodreads summary words like "clever" and "deft humour" and "whimsical" are used to describe the book. Maybe I was in a bad mood when I read it, but I didn't think the story of an extremely unwise and ultimately unproductive trip (though it resulted in this memoir, it did not inspire the author to produce 2,500 words of a novel per day) which ... I'm sorry, it was not in the least clever - in fact, it was almost criminally stupid. And I don't think something is "whimsical" if it nearly kills you.
The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review.
Now, I've often thought that if I could only have a substantial chunk of time to myself, with no mundane work-sleep schedule to adhere to (meaning enough money to live for a few weeks or months or whatever without working), I could absolutely finish my book. (The times I've been unemployed don't count, because the time needed for job-hunting and the substantial stress of being unemployed undid the benefits of having free time.) (That's my story, anyway.) It worked for another Nell, after all - Nelle Harper Lee, that is; her friends gave her an amazing gift of time, and I think it could be said she used it well. So it's not completely ridiculous that Nell Stevens decided that what she needed in order to write her novel was three months, completely alone, on an island in the Falklands, about as close as you can get to absolutely zero distractions.
Except it is completely ridiculous.
She plans it out meticulously. She can only bring so much baggage with her, so she organizes reading matter, clothing – and food, because this island she is going to is uninhabited for most of the year – like the time of year she will be going (winter, inexplicably) – and the only food she will have is what she brings with her. And here's where her lack of "street smarts" becomes dismayingly obvious. She counts every raisin. "It works out that I will eat 1,085 calories per day", she says.
Per WebMD.com, it's recommended that a woman aged 19-30 take in 2000 calories if sedentary, 2000-2200 if moderately active, and 2400 if active. And Ms. Stevens is very active during her time on this island, walking what must be miles per day. I didn't make note of how much weight she discovered she had lost when she got home after the adventure – I mean, on Survivor they tend to lose about 10% of their starting weight, and that's only 40 days, with some of those days being much more sedentary than others – but after only a few days even she recognizes that starvation does not lead to clear thought, and when higher brain functions are impaired it's hard to write a novel.
So it's not surprising that at the end of the quarter she does not have a novel completed. What she ends up with is Bleaker House, a sort of memoir/travelogue/picaresque story of her isolation and hunger, and how she handled it. And seagulls. All this is intercut with sketches from the novel-that-never-was, which seem to be well-written and have some life to them … but I can see how it died on the vine.
In the Goodreads summary words like "clever" and "deft humour" and "whimsical" are used to describe the book. Maybe I was in a bad mood when I read it, but I didn't think the story of an extremely unwise and ultimately unproductive trip (though it resulted in this memoir, it did not inspire the author to produce 2,500 words of a novel per day) which ... I'm sorry, it was not in the least clever - in fact, it was almost criminally stupid. And I don't think something is "whimsical" if it nearly kills you.
The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review.
March 13, 2017
Bleaker House is Nell Stevens' memoir of a failed attempt to isolate herself on a tiny island in the Falkland Islands to write a novel. It's a sort of mix of fiction and memoir, while Stevens talks about her motivations and experiences, she inserts small bits of fiction, including the book she tried to write during her time on the island.
Overall, this was an enjoyable read. I found that I liked the way the narrative jumped between fiction and memoir, even though I felt, at times, a little lost. As someone who dreamed of going to Antarctica as a teenager, the chapters that take place in the Falklands were the most interesting to me, and also some of the best, with incredible and honest observations on loneliness, writing, and Bleaker Island itself.
Stevens also talks at length about writing; about process, learning, and failing, which strikes me as infinitely more useful to aspiring writers than "how to write" books. I learned so much more about writing by reading this book than I did in any of the undergrad writing classes I took.
I look forward to reading whatever else Nell Stevens publishes in the future, but I do hope she will consider writing more memoir or nonfiction, as her observations on life and nature were some of my favorite parts of this book.
Overall, this was an enjoyable read. I found that I liked the way the narrative jumped between fiction and memoir, even though I felt, at times, a little lost. As someone who dreamed of going to Antarctica as a teenager, the chapters that take place in the Falklands were the most interesting to me, and also some of the best, with incredible and honest observations on loneliness, writing, and Bleaker Island itself.
Stevens also talks at length about writing; about process, learning, and failing, which strikes me as infinitely more useful to aspiring writers than "how to write" books. I learned so much more about writing by reading this book than I did in any of the undergrad writing classes I took.
I look forward to reading whatever else Nell Stevens publishes in the future, but I do hope she will consider writing more memoir or nonfiction, as her observations on life and nature were some of my favorite parts of this book.
September 29, 2017
I love the concept of this book, hated it half way through and came to the end thinking it did what it wanted for the author if not the reader.
Nell Stevens has the opportunity of a lifetime, go anywhere in the world to write your novel, she chooses the Falkland Islands. Foreign, remote, cold and a solitary challenge that will surely yield a novel. In the Information Age I was appalled that the author didn't make an informed decision, things like taking enough food, made me think her a fool.
I came around a bit when she spoke about the process of writing, and further when she discussed Bleak House and how it informed her inclusion in her own writings.
My complaint is that it was not the biography or the novel promised but the author's ruminations on parts of her life not in the Falklands.
Nell Stevens has the opportunity of a lifetime, go anywhere in the world to write your novel, she chooses the Falkland Islands. Foreign, remote, cold and a solitary challenge that will surely yield a novel. In the Information Age I was appalled that the author didn't make an informed decision, things like taking enough food, made me think her a fool.
I came around a bit when she spoke about the process of writing, and further when she discussed Bleak House and how it informed her inclusion in her own writings.
My complaint is that it was not the biography or the novel promised but the author's ruminations on parts of her life not in the Falklands.
April 15, 2017
In general, I think memoirs are best told by writers who have a few decades under their belts. It takes a degree of intellectual rigor and self-depecration to pull off the introspection of a memoir without being dull at best, annoyingly narcissistic at worst.
So I was more than pleasantly surprised by Nell Stevens’s Bleaker House, a memoir about the writer’s time isolated on the frozen Bleaker Island, with only the angry penguins for company. How she came to be there would be the envy of any young writer. Upon completing their MFA year at Boston University, students are given an unusual opportunity: every student receives a fellowship to pursue his or her writing for three moths anywhere in the world.
When Stevens chooses the tiny, isolated Bleaker Island in the Falklands–in order to get away from everything, to write her novel in solitude and struggle–the director of her MFA program advises against it. Why not Paris? he wants to know. But Stevens is determined to leave behind the distractions of Boston, and of her home city of London, of civilization in general, and be a writer. Getting to the island is difficult, and she is allowed only a very limited amount of luggage. Because the island has no stores and no residents beyond the mostly absent owners of a barely-operating farm, she must bring all of her supplies with her. She allots 1,000 calories per day, mostly in the form of instant oatmeal, raisins, and Ferrero Rocher chocolates.
What emerges from her grueling self-imposed exile is not a novel, but instead this memoir: a blunt and beautifully introspective examination of solitude and the creative process. She discovers that an island of one’s own is a far cry from a room of one’s own, and a story doesn’t necessarily flow just because you’ve shut out all ordinary distractions. Hunger and loneliness prove to be more formidable distractions, and the time stretching out before her is more harrowing than liberating.
Interspersed throughout the memoir are snippets from Stevens’s failed novel. While the fictional interludes serve to show the way life feeds into art, they are the least interesting part of the book. That said, as I read the fictional chapters, it occurred to me that they were "marketable," and had she finished the novel, it might have proved an easy sell. Instead, she returned home to London and wrote something stranger and more riveting, a hybrid gem of a book that captures the heady, scary, promising feeling of just starting out.
While the failure of the novel vexed the writer, it is to the reader’s advantage that Stevens did not write what she set out to write, but something else entirely. The something else entirely is where the beauty and heart of this book lie.
So I was more than pleasantly surprised by Nell Stevens’s Bleaker House, a memoir about the writer’s time isolated on the frozen Bleaker Island, with only the angry penguins for company. How she came to be there would be the envy of any young writer. Upon completing their MFA year at Boston University, students are given an unusual opportunity: every student receives a fellowship to pursue his or her writing for three moths anywhere in the world.
When Stevens chooses the tiny, isolated Bleaker Island in the Falklands–in order to get away from everything, to write her novel in solitude and struggle–the director of her MFA program advises against it. Why not Paris? he wants to know. But Stevens is determined to leave behind the distractions of Boston, and of her home city of London, of civilization in general, and be a writer. Getting to the island is difficult, and she is allowed only a very limited amount of luggage. Because the island has no stores and no residents beyond the mostly absent owners of a barely-operating farm, she must bring all of her supplies with her. She allots 1,000 calories per day, mostly in the form of instant oatmeal, raisins, and Ferrero Rocher chocolates.
What emerges from her grueling self-imposed exile is not a novel, but instead this memoir: a blunt and beautifully introspective examination of solitude and the creative process. She discovers that an island of one’s own is a far cry from a room of one’s own, and a story doesn’t necessarily flow just because you’ve shut out all ordinary distractions. Hunger and loneliness prove to be more formidable distractions, and the time stretching out before her is more harrowing than liberating.
Interspersed throughout the memoir are snippets from Stevens’s failed novel. While the fictional interludes serve to show the way life feeds into art, they are the least interesting part of the book. That said, as I read the fictional chapters, it occurred to me that they were "marketable," and had she finished the novel, it might have proved an easy sell. Instead, she returned home to London and wrote something stranger and more riveting, a hybrid gem of a book that captures the heady, scary, promising feeling of just starting out.
While the failure of the novel vexed the writer, it is to the reader’s advantage that Stevens did not write what she set out to write, but something else entirely. The something else entirely is where the beauty and heart of this book lie.
October 16, 2016
This memoir of a writer's attempt to force a novel in splendid isolation on Bleaker Island is fantastic. Much like in H is for Hawk, it is not really the subject but the acute and incisive intelligence of the writer which makes the book shine. Many memoirs have a cutesy or self-indulgent tone which just grates on my nerves. This one does not- it's just intelligent and honest and a great writing memoir.
May 24, 2017
Meh. I wasn't impressed with the author's quest for literary greatness. I wish she had written more about the Falkland Islands and less about how her tortured soul yielded no novels.
December 19, 2018
You can probably tell from the rating that reading Bleaker House was as horrible a mistake as Nell Stevens’ trip to the Falklands. I’d seen a couple GR friends rate this highly, and it has a penguin on the cover, and I love Bleak House (FYI it has nothing whatsoever to do with Bleak House other than the island’s name and that she brought a copy of the book instead of more food), so I went for it. Big mistake. Huge. Bleaker House pissed me right the fuck off. I recommend Bleaker House to readers who enjoy whiny memoirs by privileged white people AND also delight in the worst in literary penis feels fiction.
The blurb would have you believe that Bleaker House is “genre-defying,” because chapters of Stevens’ fiction written on her MFA writing fellowship trip to the Falklands interspersed with her memoir of the experience, largely drawn from her trip journal. Nothing about this defies genre, though admittedly the fact that the author managed to sell her shitty fiction after all does defy explanation.
Nell Stevens got her MFA in writing and won a fellowship, which would pay all her expenses to go ANYWHERE. Absolutely anywhere. She decides to go to Bleaker Island in the Falklands, believing that true authors must work in isolation, and she wanted to test her ability to deal with this loneliness. In addition, she wanted to see how much she could create in three months of isolation, assuming that this would lead to peak concentration and focus. Literally everyone she knows advises her to do literally anything else, but she’s determined.
The memoir side of Bleaker House consists of privileged complaining. There’s a constant refrain about all the pressure she’s experiencing because this is her ONE CHANCE to write a novel, because after this she will have to hold down a job and will not have the same kind of time to write. Considering that this is how almost all authors work, I feel not one iota of sympathy.
During the book, she’ll complain about her appearance, comment on life in the Falklands like she actually understands jack shit about it, and be surprised to find that it’s hard to function at your best when you plan wrong and don’t have sufficient food in your diet. So yeah, this is the story of a privileged person who takes a poorly planned, intentionally miserable vacation to the Falklands and then writes a memoir about how miserable it is to be there.
Worse than the memoir portions are her fictions. Stevens mentions her time in her MFA and that she consistently got the same criticisms: her main characters all turn out nervous and British people of privilege and her female characters aren’t realistic. Stevens writes literary fiction in the precise vein that makes me loathe literary fiction: everything she writes is about a privileged white person and, even if it has a female main character, the focus is always on a male character.
It’s pretty fucking sad that Stevens is a woman and cannot write a convincing fictional woman. She is, presumably, the product of studying too many classic male authors and taking on the patriarchal view to the degree she can’t escape it. This sort of literary fiction takes a rather unfortunate “write what you know” perspective and is too focused in on the author’s own self. As an example, there’s a horrid interlude where Nell tries to write a story about a stripper turned prostitute (to practice her writing of women). Rather than researching by reading stories or memoirs or interviewing actual women, Nell creates a fake Craigslist profile and meets a married man in search of a younger woman to pay for sex. Somehow, Stevens’ description of these events comes out almost more sympathetic towards the man than Stevens herself, who feels guilty for leading him on, even though he forced a kiss on her. This seems rather illustrative of the flaws in her work.
Strategy-wise, it’s no wonder she couldn’t finish a novel in these three months, though she’s astounded. She gave herself three times NaNoWriMo, but she fails to complete a single novel. She sets her writing goals to the minimum and doesn’t even follow those. No shit, you couldn’t finish a damn book. She also only ever had one idea for a novel, though apparently she also wrote some short stories (one of which is in second person about a college student becoming obsessed with her professor’s erotic poetry and seducing the professor’s husband WRITTEN IN SECOND PERSON). Rather than using all this free time to CREATE CREATE CREATE, she stares in the mirror. She could have had several novels pretty far along, but nope.
Stevens does admit that her novel she started to write is a failure. Which makes me wonder why the fuck readers are expected to want to read a story that EVERYONE knows DOES NOT WORK. The factor that ticks me off the most here is that Stevens manages to sell her subpar literary bullshit fiction by packaging it into her brief memoir of a shitty vacation. The hardcover is 256 pages, much of it fiction which was not good enough to sell on its own right. And, infuriatingly, Stevens ends the book by praising herself for actually managing to write a book (aka this steaming turd of white privilege), even though her initial goal was to write a NOVEL, which is a very different thing and at which she monumentally failed. The only parts of the book I enjoyed at all were the bits of writing advice from her professor, who advised her to look outside herself to create good fiction. I don’t think that will ever be happening, considering that her reaction to that was to isolate herself and package her shitty inward-looking fiction into a memoir.
Bleaker House perfectly highlights all the issues I have with literary fiction and it’s navel/novel-gazing. LBR, you know if you’re into this sort of thing. If not, save yourself the rage.
The blurb would have you believe that Bleaker House is “genre-defying,” because chapters of Stevens’ fiction written on her MFA writing fellowship trip to the Falklands interspersed with her memoir of the experience, largely drawn from her trip journal. Nothing about this defies genre, though admittedly the fact that the author managed to sell her shitty fiction after all does defy explanation.
Nell Stevens got her MFA in writing and won a fellowship, which would pay all her expenses to go ANYWHERE. Absolutely anywhere. She decides to go to Bleaker Island in the Falklands, believing that true authors must work in isolation, and she wanted to test her ability to deal with this loneliness. In addition, she wanted to see how much she could create in three months of isolation, assuming that this would lead to peak concentration and focus. Literally everyone she knows advises her to do literally anything else, but she’s determined.
The memoir side of Bleaker House consists of privileged complaining. There’s a constant refrain about all the pressure she’s experiencing because this is her ONE CHANCE to write a novel, because after this she will have to hold down a job and will not have the same kind of time to write. Considering that this is how almost all authors work, I feel not one iota of sympathy.
During the book, she’ll complain about her appearance, comment on life in the Falklands like she actually understands jack shit about it, and be surprised to find that it’s hard to function at your best when you plan wrong and don’t have sufficient food in your diet. So yeah, this is the story of a privileged person who takes a poorly planned, intentionally miserable vacation to the Falklands and then writes a memoir about how miserable it is to be there.
Worse than the memoir portions are her fictions. Stevens mentions her time in her MFA and that she consistently got the same criticisms: her main characters all turn out nervous and British people of privilege and her female characters aren’t realistic. Stevens writes literary fiction in the precise vein that makes me loathe literary fiction: everything she writes is about a privileged white person and, even if it has a female main character, the focus is always on a male character.
It’s pretty fucking sad that Stevens is a woman and cannot write a convincing fictional woman. She is, presumably, the product of studying too many classic male authors and taking on the patriarchal view to the degree she can’t escape it. This sort of literary fiction takes a rather unfortunate “write what you know” perspective and is too focused in on the author’s own self. As an example, there’s a horrid interlude where Nell tries to write a story about a stripper turned prostitute (to practice her writing of women). Rather than researching by reading stories or memoirs or interviewing actual women, Nell creates a fake Craigslist profile and meets a married man in search of a younger woman to pay for sex. Somehow, Stevens’ description of these events comes out almost more sympathetic towards the man than Stevens herself, who feels guilty for leading him on, even though he forced a kiss on her. This seems rather illustrative of the flaws in her work.
Strategy-wise, it’s no wonder she couldn’t finish a novel in these three months, though she’s astounded. She gave herself three times NaNoWriMo, but she fails to complete a single novel. She sets her writing goals to the minimum and doesn’t even follow those. No shit, you couldn’t finish a damn book. She also only ever had one idea for a novel, though apparently she also wrote some short stories (one of which is in second person about a college student becoming obsessed with her professor’s erotic poetry and seducing the professor’s husband WRITTEN IN SECOND PERSON). Rather than using all this free time to CREATE CREATE CREATE, she stares in the mirror. She could have had several novels pretty far along, but nope.
Stevens does admit that her novel she started to write is a failure. Which makes me wonder why the fuck readers are expected to want to read a story that EVERYONE knows DOES NOT WORK. The factor that ticks me off the most here is that Stevens manages to sell her subpar literary bullshit fiction by packaging it into her brief memoir of a shitty vacation. The hardcover is 256 pages, much of it fiction which was not good enough to sell on its own right. And, infuriatingly, Stevens ends the book by praising herself for actually managing to write a book (aka this steaming turd of white privilege), even though her initial goal was to write a NOVEL, which is a very different thing and at which she monumentally failed. The only parts of the book I enjoyed at all were the bits of writing advice from her professor, who advised her to look outside herself to create good fiction. I don’t think that will ever be happening, considering that her reaction to that was to isolate herself and package her shitty inward-looking fiction into a memoir.
Bleaker House perfectly highlights all the issues I have with literary fiction and it’s navel/novel-gazing. LBR, you know if you’re into this sort of thing. If not, save yourself the rage.
August 26, 2017
This is a funny novel about a girl who decided "to invest" her career to become a writer, so as an extreme measurement, she thought by staying an isolated place, away from chaos, which bring some peace and concentration to begin her first novel....so she choose Bleaker Island in the Falkland (South of Atlantic Ocean). It's a remote island where the number of population is: 2 (including her), during the winter season, along penguins and sheep. It brings some hilarious parts (for example when she enters in panic realizing there's no WIFI or internet signal in Bleaker island, only in Stanley - capital city of Falkland -) which gives a great experience to the reader how nuts, yet incredible courageous, Nell Stevens, decided to stay for a couple of months to do a novel in this isolated island as she is a city girl who loves to socialize, a good drink and internet connection.
However it didn't blow me away too much this book, isn't the author fault, I guess. She simply described her experience in the Falkland and her challenges during those times. Nell's writing is simply easy to read and she does have a good sense of humor. This is a memoir and sort of autobiography about her stay in the Falkland.
★★★☆☆
However it didn't blow me away too much this book, isn't the author fault, I guess. She simply described her experience in the Falkland and her challenges during those times. Nell's writing is simply easy to read and she does have a good sense of humor. This is a memoir and sort of autobiography about her stay in the Falkland.
★★★☆☆
May 23, 2024
A strange novel, not really a novel about a woman who wants to be a novelist and goes off to the Falkland Islands to figure out how to write a novel and ends up failing but in a really good way. This is funny and odd and sometimes touching. I'm still not entirely sure what to make of it, but I did enjoy it.
February 26, 2017
https://msarki.tumblr.com/post/157729...
What a great title and promising concept. So much to get excited about in advance of even reading the first page. But then delving in, and feeling immersed, proves disappointing and not to be in the cards. Truth is, just because the author is a professor of writing does not guarantee a good read. Or the fact the lettered writer won a prize. These teachers of fiction have contributed mightily to littering our world with useless books and done their part to heap our landfills. But all is not lost however for any writing student interested in examples of what not to do. Exhibits abound in this text, and for the most part, continue on for the book’s duration as proof. Evidence that is disjointed, disoriented, annoying, jumbled, ill prepared, and somewhat a frustrating bore. It is more promising if a writer is at least interesting, or has a personality a reader could not possibly ignore. But when each willful attempt at sitting down for another page of reading becomes the most disagreeable moment of the day this collusion with hope that the work will get better turns ill-advised. And time to put it down for good.
What a great title and promising concept. So much to get excited about in advance of even reading the first page. But then delving in, and feeling immersed, proves disappointing and not to be in the cards. Truth is, just because the author is a professor of writing does not guarantee a good read. Or the fact the lettered writer won a prize. These teachers of fiction have contributed mightily to littering our world with useless books and done their part to heap our landfills. But all is not lost however for any writing student interested in examples of what not to do. Exhibits abound in this text, and for the most part, continue on for the book’s duration as proof. Evidence that is disjointed, disoriented, annoying, jumbled, ill prepared, and somewhat a frustrating bore. It is more promising if a writer is at least interesting, or has a personality a reader could not possibly ignore. But when each willful attempt at sitting down for another page of reading becomes the most disagreeable moment of the day this collusion with hope that the work will get better turns ill-advised. And time to put it down for good.
June 14, 2017
What a terrible book. I rolled my eyes so many times I'm surprised they aren't stuck. I think I hated this one more than Eat Pray Love and that's saying a lot. She can't be a writer until she does something interesting? *rolleyes* She gets a grant to go anywhere to write but she chooses the Falkland Islands (and has no interest in the islands, the people, the wildlife, anything) because she needs to be alone? *rolleyes* And then she whines about being alone. And guess what she didn't write as much as she thought she would. *rolleyes* They should have called this Whine Island - How I Whine My Way Through Life because she whined in London, she whined in Boston, she whined in the Falklands. She goes to the Falklands but doesn't research anything so she doesn't have enough entertainment or food. She is surprised that the internet is expensive and doesn't work well. OMG I hated this book so much. At least it was short. Narcisstic, whiner who thinks doing stupid things will show her the meaning of life.
April 4, 2022
I found Bleaker House at a library discard sale and bought it based on the penguin on the cover and the Falkland Islands’ proximity to Antarctica- what a gem!
The book is part memoir, part the novel the author is working on during her stay in Bleaker Island, and part short stories. It’s a different format, a different premise, and I feel like I clicked with the author and what she was doing. I related so much to the author- not like I find myself in the exact same situations, but her general motivations, thoughts, actions…I love this book.
The book is part memoir, part the novel the author is working on during her stay in Bleaker Island, and part short stories. It’s a different format, a different premise, and I feel like I clicked with the author and what she was doing. I related so much to the author- not like I find myself in the exact same situations, but her general motivations, thoughts, actions…I love this book.
January 5, 2018
I wanted to love this book, but I just don't think that people in their 20s (myself very much included) have the right mix of material and retrospection to write a memoir. I felt that way when I picked up the book, so perhaps I prejudiced myself against it. The structure, mixing fiction and memoir, also didn't work for me. Oh well!
March 21, 2019
Very interesting premise and very good writing, but the short stories interspersed throughout and the ending felt like filler and a forced resolution to a writing assignment. I guess I was expecting more about the Falkland Islands and less short story snippets.
September 20, 2020
Not nearly enough penguins.
October 30, 2018
Sometimes a book can be a companion. I read this while I was on a writing residency working on a novel, so of course reading about another writer on a (much more remote and difficult) residency working on a novel really connected with me. It's a light, easy, funny read – at times this was frustrating, as there were opportunities to go deeper or smarter, which weren't taken. But it is what it is, and I enjoyed it. It was exactly the book I needed to keep me company.
April 4, 2017
Well, this was fabulous. Witty, compulsively readable, and a laugh or three on almost every page. Proper review to come nearer to publication date.
February 24, 2020
This was incredibly inspiring and I am surprised at how many words I managed to write whilst reading this book. Not only the nudge I needed to get going, but an amazing insight into the harsh and brutal weather and life of the Antarctic.
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