A beautiful and beguiling novel of New York told through the lives of some of those who have defined the city: Robert Moses, Edmund White, Walt Whitman and Robert Mapplethorpe.
Megan Bradbury was born in the United States and grew up in Britain. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. In 2012 she was awarded the Charles Pick Fellowship at UEA and in 2013 she won an Escalator Literature Award and a Grant for the Arts to help fund the completion of her first novel, Everyone is Watching.
I loved Megan Bradbury’s debut novel, Everyone Is Watching, a book
ostensibly about a century or so of life in New York, but really
about how cities themselves are works of communal action and art,
and about how, even in the most draconian and reactionary of times,
the vibrancy of these two things will light, reveal, challenge and
reshape the fabrics of where and how we live. It’s a beating heart
of a novel
*Guardian*
A highly original and elegantly written debut . . . a genuine
attempt to evolve the form of the novel while trying to find a new
way to tell a person's story . . . one has to applaud the great
ambition of this book . . . There's a hypnotic effect to the prose
and a sense that the author both understands and loves this most
complicated of cities . . . a fascinating gift . . . [Megan
Bradbury] is an extraordinary talent.
*The Irish Times*
A kaleidoscopic dreamscape of New York seen through the eyes of
some of its most celebrated inhabitants . . . immersive and
compelling . . . hypnotic . . . dirty, dangerous and delicious,
this is a novel that understands the cost of contact and bets on it
anyway
*New Statesman*
I have been haunted by Megan Bradbury's debut, Everyone Is
Watching, ever since I read an early copy months ago. Through the
lives of four historical New Yorkers, it dramatises more powerfully
than any other novel I know the interdependence of artistic making
and urban life
*Guardian*
It's one of the best debuts I've read in years
*Times Literary Supplement*
The insouciant audacity of Megan Bradbury’s Everyone Is Watching
took me by surprise. It has darknesses but its spirit of joy and
the sheer sense of purpose of the famous characters lifted me in
this bleak year
*Guardian*
I loved it . . . Bradbury's writing is beautiful: unusual,
intoxicating and bold . . . I finished Everyone Is Watching on a
high
*Guardian*
New York City as a creative catalyst is an enticing subject matter
and one that receives a delightfully unexpected treatment in
Bradbury's elegant debut
*GQ*
A short book with a big bold sweep. It pulses with the life of the
great city and rattles along with its energy.
*Daily Mail*
In a narrative about art, creativity and vision, she shows the
flair of an artist, capturing snapshots, vignettes of the
characters who inhabited New York through the culturally, socially
and sexually transformative period from the 1890s through to the
present day . . . Megan Bradbury's idiosyncrasy and chutzpah are a
fitting epitaph to a city that, as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it, has
the 'wild promise of all the mystery and beauty in the world'
*Herald*
A mesmerising read, Everyone is Watching throws you into the heart
of New York
*Stylist*
By interleaving a series of parallel New York narratives spanning
120 years, she makes that great metropolis seem intimate, its
inhabitants connected across the decades by shared desires
*Daily Telegraph*
Fascinating novella, almost a work of philosophy . . . Bradbury
makes connections between people and places, and across time, that
are edifying and moving
*Herald Scotland*
Bradbury's idiosyncrasy and chutzpah are a fitting epitaph to a
city that , as F Scott Fitzgerald put it, had the "wild promise of
all the mystery and beauty in the world"
*Press Association*
I like boldness in a writer, and you don't get much bolder than
writing a meditative, intertwining narrative of four New Yorkers .
. .
*National*
An impressively original debut . . . Everyone is Watching manages
to be both intimate and epic at the same time - quite an
achievement
*The Bookseller*
Vivid, full of deadpan humour and very, very unusual
*Emma Healey, author of Elizabeth is Missing *
This beautiful, kaleidoscopic imagining of the artists' creation of
New York means everyone should be watching Megan Bradbury from now
on
*Eimear McBride, Baileys Prize-winning author of A Girl Is a
Half-formed Thing*
Megan Bradbury's daring, urgent novel is a thrilling act of psychic
and historical excavation, a profound examination of the
relationship between urban spaces and the making of art. A moving
portrait of lives linked across time, Everyone is Watching is an
important addition to the literature of New York.
*Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You*
Megan Bradbury writes with the elegance of a Tiffany's diamond and
the intensity of Times Square at rush hour. Through the eyes of
Robert Mapplethorpe, Walt Whitman, Robert Moses and Edmund White,
we experience the passion, heartbreak and soaring ambition that
defines New York City.
*Patricia Morrisroe, author Mapplethorpe: A Biography*
This is a wonderful book, unique and surprising, alive to the
energy and mystery of New York, written in language that swings
between spare poetry and raw, gnarly sex.
*Joe Dunthorne, author of Submarine*
A wonderful read . . . Everyone is Watching reaches beyond itself
in such fascinating ways . . . I was left with a much richer sense
of New York as a city, and a much deeper sense of the creative life
of cities (and people!) in general. So, a very satisfying, thought
provoking read indeed.
*Al Robertson, author of Crashing Heaven*
Sentence by sentence, scene by scene, Everyone is Watching is as
beautifully constructed as the city it celebrates. Here is New York
through the eyes of its artists, in a novel as striking and
memorable and brave as the art it describes.
*Andrew Cowan, author of Worthless Men *
An astonishing debut novel from a true original, whose talent pours
out of these pages. A magical interweaving of New York stories from
the perspectives of the architects and artists who made Manhattan
in their image and whose loves, schemes, ambitions and dreams all
connect through time, pyschogeography and Megan Bradbury's luminous
prose.
*Cathi Unsworth, author of Without the Moon *
Everyone is Watching is an astonishing debut. Megan Bradbury has
written a subtle and powerful novel of New York, its architects,
artists and - her greatest achievement - the consciousness of the
city itself.
*Jean McNeil, author of The Ice Lovers *
Illuminating . . . It sends you back to its sources while demanding
that you read on.
*David Flusfleder, author of The Gift *
A first novel by a talented young writer . . . written with
imagination, great assurance and a painterly eye, it builds up a
fine portrait of the city
*Scotsman*
Bradbury has this astonishing ability to capture a lifetime in a
line and to evoke the tangibility of longing in the human heart.
Everyone is Watching in an exquisite orchestra of lyrical narrative
that deserves a book-prize recognition
*Attitude*
Megan Bradbury's epic feels like a love letter to the city . . . an
intimate, elegant and sweeping novel of such depth and richness,
you'll feel energised and rejuvenated by the power the individual
has on the personality of a city
*Reader's Digest*
Speculative and daring, by turns brash, brutal, tender and elegiac,
Everyone is Watching is a love song - one that is as protean,
multifaceted, elusive and captivating as the city that is at its
heart. Written in a direct, spare prose, it is ambitious and brave,
a virtuoso performance.
*Evening News*
Everyone is Watching offers a fascinating glimpse into a creative
world
*BBC Arts Online*
Ask a Question About this Product More... |