Charles Lambert

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Biographical note:  Charles Lambert was born in England but has lived in Italy since 1976. He works as a university language teacher and editor for international agencies. His debut novel, Little Monsters, was published by Picador in March 2008. The title story, The Scent of Cinnamon, was selected as one of the O. Henry Prize Stories 2007.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844714964
ISBN:  9781844714964
Author:  Charles Lambert
Title:  The Scent of Cinnamon
Series:  Salt Modern Fiction
Product class:  BB
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  FNB
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  15-Oct-08
Extent:  304pp
Height:  198 mm
Width:  129 mm
Thickness:  26 mm
Weight:  456 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  NP
Price:  GBP 14.99
Price:  USD 26.95
Rights:  World

Main description:  These prize-winning stories deal with life, love, loneliness, delusion, misunderstanding, death. An office worker wakes to find his body invaded by a mysterious parasite. A desperate woman seeks escape through fire. A girl who knows only the forest is taken to the city for the first time. A solitary young boy conjures a girl from leaves to replace his twin sister. In one story a governess is forced to come to terms with the truth of the family she has loved and served, and the world in which she lives. In another, a one-night stand with a sadist triggers a meditation on sexual pleasure and serial killers. Some characters look for work, for ways to change their lives, for somewhere new to live; others for someone to love or be loved by, or to hurt. Not everyone is good. Not everyone is honest with himself or herself. Not everyone gets what they want, or deserve. The stories’ settings range across time and space, from the colonial outback in the late nineteenth century to contemporary urban life in London and Rome and Paris, to both warring sides of the Second World War. The tone is comic, dry, satirical, vivid, magical, disturbing, poignant, spare. Not a word is wasted in these stories, which describe the world not only as it is and was, but also as it might be.

Table of contents:
The Scent of Cinnamon
The Number Worm
Moving the Needle Towards the Thread
Girlie
Beacons
All Gone
Soap
Something Rich and Strange
The Crack
Nipples
Entertaining Friends
Toad
Air
Damage
Little Potato, Little Pea
The Growing

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Excerpt from book:  

THE SCENT OF CINNAMON

Dear Mrs Payne

I have been given your name by the Reverend Ware, vicar of the English community here. I am a blunt man, and I shall come straight to the point. Ware tells me that you have recently lost your husband and are without means. He has suggested to me that you may be interested in marriage with a man who can provide you with the security and affection you require. He has indicated to me that I may be such a man. I have every reason to trust Ware's judgement in these matters, above all because he knew you as an unmarried girl and speaks highly of your breeding, modesty and intelligence. For my part, I offer you a man of thirty-seven years, of which nineteen have been passed outside his own country. I have a farm that would comfortably contain an English county. I am fit, healthy and, if Ware is to be trusted also in this matter, of sufficiently pleasing appearance to make my appeal for your hand appropriate and possessing of some possibility of success.
I enclose a photograph. The dog's name is Jasper.
I look forward to receiving your reply.

Yours sincerely
Joseph Broderick

It would do, he thought. He looked at the photograph for a moment and saw a man, a liver-spotted dog, a house, then folded the sheet of paper around it and slid them both into the envelope. Miriam Payne, he murmured, writing these words in his small clear forward-sloping hand, and beneath them an address in Cornwall, a county he had never seen. Miriam Payne he repeated in a stronger voice, then: Miriam Broderick. Yes. It would do.

The reply arrived six weeks later and was brief.

Dear Mr Broderick

Thank you for your letter and the photograph enclosed, both of which have given me much food for thought. I shall say at once that I am prepared to consider your offer. However, before doing so, I too shall be frank. I would like you to answer me one question, which may appear impertinent but is, I believe, quite the opposite. Dear Mr Broderick, have you ever been in love?
I also enclose a photograph. As you see, I have no dog. I am not sure that I like dogs, nor that dogs like me.

Yours sincerely
Miriam Payne

The woman in the photograph was younger than Joseph had expected. Her hair was long, caught up on one side by a clip of some kind and loose at the other to hang across her shoulder. He couldn't tell its colour but imagined it deep and dark and heavy, a lustrous red. Her eyes and eyelashes were also dark. Although she wasn't smiling, the set of her mouth suggested that smiling were its purpose; even solemn, its owner had small dimples in both cheeks. She was dressed in widow's weeds, which made her form hard to decipher, but she appeared to be slender and even elegant. Her hands, crossed on her lap, were small but strong. He closed his eyes and she was still sufficiently there for him to move her and place her beside him, on the other side from Jasper, in front of the house he had built for himself and a wife he had never had. He saw them together and felt his heart beat faster, as though he had chased a runaway sheep across a field. He replied that same day.

Dear Mrs Payne

Thank you for your letter and photograph, both of which considerably eased my mind. The fact that you are prepared to consider my offer fills me with hope and, if I may admit such a feeling, trepidation. As to your question, which is more than pertinent, I can answer without shame that I have never been fortunate enough to have known love, convinced though I am to possess the faculty for it.
I look forward with some anxiety to your reply.

Yours sincerely
Joseph Broderick

Another six weeks passed. Broderick began to see the house he had built with his own hands through other eyes, through the dark and deep-set eyes of the woman in the photograph. The tamped earth floors, shiny with wear as if waxed, the stone and whitewashed walls, the bareness of the shuttered uncurtained windows, which before he hadn't noticed or had maybe thought appropriate to his single life, as hard and bare as his surroundings, now distressed and embarrassed him. The straight-backed chairs became uncomfortable, unyielding. How could a lady sit on them? How could a lady live in a house so male and austere and unadorned?
He would have asked another woman what could be done to make his house acceptable, but there was no married woman in the neighbourhood he could trust to take him seriously. There was no one with the taste required; the women around had neither breeding nor education. Besides, he would look ridiculous if Miriam decided not to marry him, a single middle-aged man, alone in a house full of frills and ribbons. He could have asked Reverend Ware, who had an eye for such things, but didn't.

And what would she bring herself, if she did decide to come, he wondered. Paintings, embroidery, cushions perhaps. A musical instrument of some kind. Perhaps the wisest choice would be to wait in the bare house and allow her to mould it into the place she could most comfortably consider her own, her new married home in her new world. And then he imagined her trunks stacked neatly beside her on the quay, a dozen iron-bound trunks, his cart weighed down with them. Sometimes the vision of her was so vivid it seemed that she was already there beside him and he would shake his head until she had gone, and then feel desolate.

When her second letter arrived, his hand began to tremble. Jasper barked and clawed at his waist. ‘It's all right, lad,’ Broderick said. ‘It's all right.’
And it was.

Unpublished endorsement:  These are accomplished stories of great subtlety and restraint. I absolutely love ‘The Scent of Cinnamon'. Made all the hairs on my arms stand up. A classic. So confidently and beautifully written … Charles Lambert is a very interesting writer who could one day attain classic status.

Maggie Gee

Review quote:  For Little Monsters: Beautifully written and crafted, and more compelling than many thrillers.

John Harding
Daily Mail

Review quote:  For Little Monsters: When I was thirteen, my father killed my mother’ is an opening line that could go one of two ways. Thankfully, it pans out into a haunting novel, not a turgid misery. This is the story of a young girl ripped apart by grief, shunted off to an uncaring relative and, finally, finding the stability she craves in her Uncle Joey. But the chance to upset the equilibrium of human relationships is only ever a breath away.

Good Housekeeping

Review quote:  This volume contains the best story I have read in several years, although the prize jury felt otherwise: Charles Lambert's "The Scent of Cinnamon". While other stories in the anthology push the creative boundaries of the short story form, Lambert's story is a classic short story in the O. Henry mould, complete with a surprise revealed at the end that adds a whole new dimension to what you have just read. The story is not one word longer than it should be, and every word is meaningful and well-chosen. The portrayal of longing amidst isolation is powerfully moving. This story is a work of art which should be taught in schools as a model of the form.

Amazon.com

Review quote:  “The Scent of Cinnamon,” a love story of heart-rending proportions, is written in a language that is simple and readable, yet one that rides on the undercurrent of the classics, and in most parts, modern-day magical realism. Intimate situations are probably the hardest to depict. In this beautiful story, Lambert proves himself a master.

Manila Standard Today

Review quote:  Talented Charles Lambert presents "The Scent of Cinnamon," a memorable and haunting tale of an arranged marriage between a widow and a farmer. It's the kind of story you have to read twice, for the ending is so surprising — and so good — that rereading is the only way to make sense of it all.

Oakland Tribune

Previous review quote:  Charles Lambert's ‘Entertaining Friends’ contains writing that is charged and memorable – with a powerful sense of place. Compelling reading.

Patricia Duncker

Previous review quote:  Charles Lambert writes as if his life depends on it. He takes risks at every turn. As an editor, this is exciting to see, and as a fellow writer, it is inspiring – particularly when the results are so marvellous. In ‘The Scent of Cinnamon’, Charles Lambert pulls out the deepest-held emotions of his characters – love and desire and loneliness and hope – until they ripple across the page, and the reader feels them too.

Hannah Tinti