Member: clare.wigfall

Just read your story The Numbers and was floored by how the voice drew me in. Peigi was a wonderfully engaging character.
Here, where I am, it is difficult to get books in English (or any dialect thereof), but I am going to try acquiring your book soon, perhaps online. Great stuff!

posted by MichaelDJB at 10:03 pm (EST) on Jun 6, 2009

Thanks Clare! Nice to know I'm not the only one who's so pleased!

posted by Booksloth at 11:37 am (EST) on Nov 3, 2008

Hi, Clare!

You may not know yet - I've only just found out myself! We're both longlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize. I'm over the moon with excitement, and I hope you are too! I absolutely loved your collection - I've been meaning to tell you for some time - and let me offer you huge congratulations!

Rob Shearman

posted by shearrob at 2:43 pm (EST) on May 3, 2008

Hi again Clare. I was inspired by seeing your librarything. I now have somewhere to catalogue books as well as music. If only there was somewhere to catalogue films. Then all of my desires would be satiated! See you in Berlin x

posted by jealousy at 5:19 pm (EST) on Mar 18, 2008

Clare, I picked up a copy of your book from Wenlock Books this weekend, after having read a review on http://dovegreyreader.typepad.com/ a while back. How on earth do you manage to change voices so well?! I've never read a book of short stories where the characters vary as much as yours do. Yours is definitely one of my favourite books of the year - and I'm certainly going to re-read it soon. The bee story is really haunting me. And for some reason, the sentence "Gnats had begun to enter." tickled me. I can't explain why.

Looking forward to your next book.

sandpiper

posted by sandpiper at 3:51 pm (EST) on Nov 12, 2007

Clare, I have finished. I wrote a review and posted it on my blog and on here and I will post it on Amazon as well. Well done doesn't even begin to cover it. And to think I actually can talk to you online.

I will be waiting impatiently for your next book and all others to come. Hopefully there will be many.

Thanks again.

Candy

posted by carolcarter at 12:04 am (EST) on Nov 3, 2007

Still reading, still getting more and more impressed.

posted by carolcarter at 4:01 pm (EST) on Nov 2, 2007

You write like you have been doing it for decades, with such mastery and you are able to evoke the local patois particularly well. The Ocularist's Wife, When The Wasps Drowned, and The Numbers are incredibly evocative while quite shocking. I am reading your book as if it were already a classic. I don't know if you know Flannery O'Connor but you remind me a bit of her but different if that makes any sense.

I intend to keep reading. Thanks so much for writing the book. Not much gets me as excited as finding a new author I love to read.

posted by carolcarter at 7:11 am (EST) on Nov 2, 2007

Clare, I am farther along and I am so impressed. You are incredibly talented. Please say you are writing more books.

Candy

posted by carolcarter at 11:28 pm (EST) on Nov 1, 2007

I have only read the first story so far and it is amazing. You have a tremendous amount of talent. I hope you are getting ready to write another book. When I finish I will do a review on here and my blog. I have no doubt it will be a rave.

Candy

posted by carolcarter at 4:27 am (EST) on Nov 1, 2007

FINALLY your book has arrived. I shall dip into it immediately i have some free time. What a long wait that was.

Hope you are well.

posted by carolcarter at 3:39 pm (EST) on Oct 31, 2007

Ah yes. I just checked that out and left a couple of comments. So glad you both have more to come. And the reason I know I feel that way about you without having read anything yet is that I trust Dove Grey implicitly.

posted by carolcarter at 5:24 pm (EST) on Oct 14, 2007

Clare, great to hear from you. It is Amazon keeping me waiting but it will arrive eventually. If I had known I would have used The Book Depository. I am enjoying the gods and will review it when finished. Same for your book. If you speak to Marie do tell her there is at least one fan of hers in Michigan. Are you and she going to be writing more? I certainly hope so.

Cheers.

Candy

posted by carolcarter at 4:16 pm (EST) on Oct 14, 2007

Clare, I am enjoying Gods Behaving Badly quite a lot. Still waiting for The Loudest Sound. I have no idea why it is taking so long. Many times I wished I lived in Europe. Definitely wish I lived there with Bush as President here.

posted by carolcarter at 10:12 am (EST) on Oct 13, 2007

I received Gods Behaving Badly today but unfortunately your book will not arrive until about mid October. I hope your sales do well.

Cheers.

posted by carolcarter at 4:21 pm (EST) on Sep 14, 2007

I ordered your book today and I eagerly await its arrival. I also found Gods Behaving Badly at Book Depository which Dove Grey Reader put me onto.

Hope you are well. You must be so excited.

posted by carolcarter at 7:13 pm (EST) on Sep 6, 2007

I have both books on my wish list. I will know when they are out. I am having trouble finding the longlisted Booker Prize books this year as well. They must have to reprint. It is just as well. I have so many books to read it is possible I will not finish them before I die. You have several that I am interested in. When I read them I will let you know.

Cheers.

Candy

posted by carolcarter at 4:47 am (EST) on Sep 2, 2007

I see your book and Gods Behaving Badly are both listed at Amazon without a publication date. Do you know when yours will be coming out over here? Also how can you have Gods Behaving Badly? Do you get advance copies?

posted by carolcarter at 8:53 pm (EST) on Sep 1, 2007

Hi, Clare!

And thanks so much for the link. If not for help in promoting my own collection (although, I suppose, you never know...), but more for finding new writers I can search out! Late at night I'll start randomly perusing pages at Amazon, trying to find new short story collections that look interesting. It's so frustrating that the short story format is seen over here in the UK as being basically uncommercial, whilst the US and Europe seem to embrace it as their own. I'm off to the States soon (as a guest at a Doctor Who convention - you write for that show, and it *never* dies down), and the main reason I'm going - secretly - is so I can head into the city and look through the bookshelves at Borders or Barnes and Noble. It's there I've discovered some of my favourite writers - Scott Bradfield, Kevin Brockmeier, Kelly Link - and now, thanks to that site, I can go armed with a list of names to track down!

(Oh, and I had no idea Marie Phillips was a Doctor Who fan. I'm always somewhat amazed when people are! I wrote for the first series of the revival, and nobody at the BBC seemed to believe we'd find an audience for it whatsoever, and that everybody involved would be trying to remove the credit from our CV with Tipp-Ex for the rest of our working lives.)

I shall be reading your book *very* soon, and with great interest! And do please keep in touch too. All the writers I know are dramatists - theatre writers, TV writers, radio writers... I've only this year entered the Exciting World of Prose and Paragraphs, and it'd be lovely (and reassuring) to wave hello from time to time at someone who writes other than stage directions and dialogue!

posted by shearrob at 7:43 pm (EST) on Aug 26, 2007

Hello, Clare - and thank you for adding me as a friend!

I stumbled across a publisher's proof of your collection in London a few weeks ago, and just had to snatch it up. I stood in the bookshop, read the first couple of pages of 'The Numbers', and was sold immediately. They just stood out as something very original - and, in a strange way, even by the narrator's insistence on using numbers within the prose as often as possible, something rather unnerving too.

I'm a bit embarrassed to say I haven't had time to read further yet. (I've my own collection out this October, and I've been having a last minute scamper through them, trying to work out if the stories are really any good or not!) But I'm taking a holiday in a few weeks, and the new Clare Wigfall will be in my suitcase. So to speak...!

Many congratulations - I hope you enjoy the launch, and that you get all the attention you quite clearly deserve!

Rob

posted by shearrob at 9:25 am (EST) on Aug 26, 2007