Sue Hubbard

Search for a word or phrase in this book …

Biographical note:  Sue Hubbard is an award-winning poet, novelist and art critic. Twice winner of the London Writers’ Competition she was The Poetry Society's first Public Art Poet responsible for London's largest public art poem at Waterloo. She has published two acclaimed collections of poetry, Everything Begins with the Skin (Enitharmon) and Ghost Station (Salt). Her first novel Depth of Field was praised by John Berger. She writes regularly on art for The Independent and The New Statesman.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844714445
ISBN:  9781844714445
Author:  Sue Hubbard
Title:  Rothko’s Red
Series:  Salt Modern Fiction
Product class:  BB
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  FNB
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  15-Sep-08
Extent:  160pp
Height:  198 mm
Width:  129 mm
Thickness:  16 mm
Weight:  240 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  NP
Price:  GBP 12.99
Price:  USD 23.95
Rights:  World

Main description:  Rothko’s Red is a collection of ten stories, subtly linked by painting and art, about the lives of women: their hopes, fears, failures and challenges. They reveal the choices and destinies of characters from various backgrounds, embracing the harsh realities of desire, loss and ageing. Powerful, yet tender, psychologically intricate and emotionally perceptive, these stories examine the complex lives of modern women. Substantial, moving and beautifully written they call upon Sue Hubbard’s wide ranging knowledge of and feel for art.

Table of contents:
Rothko’s Red
Mona Lisa
Jackson Pollock's Curtains
The Monarch of the Glen
Mondrian's Moon
Bernini and Leopard Skin
Goya's Dark
Oi Yoi Yoi
The Hay Wain
The Laughing Cavalier

View excerpt as PDF:

Click here to view a sample (74 KB)

Excerpt from book:  

Bernini and Leopard Skin

Simon Hoffman did not feel quite as sophisticated as he would, perhaps, have liked to feel standing in his socks — he was relieved he had put on new ones and not the ones with holes — as he waited in the queue at Stansted holding his brogues in his hand ready to place them in the X-ray machine. Now was probably not the best moment, as he removed the loose change from his trouser pockets, along with the belt that was holding up his lightweight khaki trousers, to put in the small plastic tray, to ask if this trip was really such a good idea. Kiera, he was aware, had been called over by one of the airport security staff who was opening her leopard skin vanity case and delving suspiciously into its depths. He wondered if hair tongs could be classed as a weapon and would, therefore, have to be left in the plastic box along with all the other nail scissors and pen knives that hadn’t been allowed on board.

Hairbrushes, aerosols and deodorants, as well as several exotic looking pots and tubes of face cream, were spread out in front of her like the counter in some chaotic chemist’s shop as the burly official advised her that either she would have to leave most of them behind or pack them in her luggage as they exceeded the legal liquid allowance permitted on board.

‘Leave them behind? That’s Christian Dior,’ Kiera responded incensed. ‘You must be joking.’

This was not a good start. Putting the Christian Dior in her luggage meant that Kiera had to pull back on her high suede boots, which she’d only just wriggled out of in order to place them in the X-ray machine, and go back out through security to the Check In. Simon could not help but feel a bit irritated. Surely she must have known. Everyone knew that there were liquid restrictions on flights. ‘I’ll meet you on the other side of passport control in the Costa Coffee lounge,’ he said handing her her ticket.

Simon Hoffman was the senior editor of a firm that published glossy art books. Ostensibly he was on his way to the British School in Rome to do some research for a new illustrated edition on the Bernini sculptures. It was a place he had visited several times before and always enjoyed. The cordial social dinners at the long table with their mix of young artists and seasoned art historians in the fine Lutyens’ building were always a pleasure. He liked being near the Villa Guilia, the country residence of Pope Julius III, with its splendid Etruscan collection and close enough to the centre of Rome to either walk in or catch a bus. It was his favourite city. Of course Venice and Florence were wonderful, but Rome always seemed, somehow, grittier, more real. For him it was the cradle of the arts, where antiquity, Christianity and modern humanism all coalesced. Certainly Rome had its tourists but they seemed quickly absorbed into its everyday life. He was not expected at the British School until the Monday evening and this was Friday morning. He had, in fact, been a little economical with Lucy about la verite concerning his travel arrangements. This had given him an extra weekend and it was this time that he was planning to spend with Kiera Hamilton. At 57, Simon was the most senior in the firm; admired rather than liked. He knew the right people but some found him a little self satisfied for he was the only one of the senior editors with a doctorate and that, he somehow felt, gave him the edge.

In Costa Coffee he ordered himself a double macchiato and waited for Kiera, trying not to mind that he was doing so, but feeling the annoyance somewhere in his bowels. He had known her now for about three months, if known was the right word. She had come to work in the office as a temp while his usual secretary, Dawn, was on maternity leave. She’d been sent from an agency they had not used before. When he had opened the door that morning he’d been taken aback by Kiera’s long blonde hair and low cleavage and had thought, for a moment, that she must be in the wrong place, for she looked more like a star from Eurotrash than someone sent to help work on a book on Bernini. But despite her only embryonic interest in art she turned out to be more than proficient at indexing.

It had been the night that Lucy was out rehearsing Mozart’s Requiem with the choir, (they had an important concert coming up at the Albert Hall), that Simon had casually suggested to Kiera that they might have a drink after work. They had gone to Kettner’s in Soho, a favourite of his, and after the champagne one thing, as they say in Mills and Boon novels, had led to another. Over the next few weeks, whenever he could, Simon Hoffman would find his way to Kiera’s rather dreary flat, which she shared at the bottom of Archway Road with another girl, who, apparently, was a nurse and never seemed to be there. He loved the lewd sex, the way she would keep on her black stockings and high heels while he fucked her and how, without any cajoling on his part, she would climb on top, pinning his hands above his head so that he couldn’t move until he came. He simply could not get enough of her skin, silky and tanned from the sun bed, and her shaved muff or the fact that even in the middle of the month she would be so hot, that after an hour of strenuous fucking his stomach would be streaked with bright red blood.

He was not a conventionally handsome man, though he did like to think that he had a certain presence when he walked into a room. What looks he had once had whilst a young man at Oxford had somewhat faded; his hair had thinned and his girth expanded with Lucy’s cooking. Lucy was a very good cook. In fact Lucy was exceptionally good at most things. A GP who specialised in family planning, she was also an excellent mother to his two teenage sons, Giles and Ben. Fluent herself in Italian, she possessed a beautiful singing voice and had recently taken up the harp, which she’d already mastered to a very high standard. Everyone constantly told him how very lucky he was to have such an intelligent and accomplished wife. Well, probably they were right. Yet somehow all this earnest achievement quietly got on his nerves and dulled his desire. He longed for a bit of spontaneous chaos. He knew that he should appreciate her attributes, but felt smothered by her efficiency, her achievements and tireless organisation. Did nothing ever get Lucy down? In all the years they had been together she was never anything other than resolutely cheerful. He wondered if there was a chink in her armour that he had not seen; but if there was it had, even after all this time, never been obvious to him. They rarely made love now, and when they did so he felt it a joyless duty, a question more of rubber and spermicides than sexual fulfilment. Yet he had the sneaking suspicion that the situation suited her and that after the boys were born she had been quite happy to let things drift. But he longed for something more, something that would make him feel — what? Renewed?

Unpublished endorsement:  A dazzling collection.

Ruth Fainlight

Previous review quote:  on Depth of Field: Highly evocative….the rare quality, not of a text, but of a place. It surrounds its readers and waits until they see in the dark to make their own discoveries.

John Berger

Previous review quote:  Depth of Field is a poet's novel in the best sense of the word; lyrical, highly visual and beautifully observed. At its heart is a profound and moving study of one woman's struggle for self-determination.

John Burnside

Previous review quote:  on Depth of Field: This is a first novel by a writer of genuine talent. Sue Hubbard's originality lies in the gritty detail of the imaged past she pursues among the realities of a contemporary East End. This gives a remarkable freshness to her theme of a lost Jewish identity underlying Hannah's moving story.

Elaine Feinstein

Previous review quote:  This is remarkable writing, born of a long and painful negotiation both with personal experience and the art of poetry.

Martyn Crucefix
Magma

Previous review quote:  Sue Hubbard's poems are haunting, sensuous and at times disturbingly sharp in their revealed intimacies; her eye – and her touch – are vividly alive to pleasures of surface, as well as to dark depths of anger and melancholy.

Marina Warner

Previous review quote:  She reminds me of Gwen John in her stillness and love of the ‘actually loved and known'… giving generously of life and warmth and technical mastery.

Sebastian Barker