Flesh and Blood

by Michèle Roberts

Freddy thinks he has committed matricide, and his fantasies - or perhaps realities - become stories which twist back through time to varying landscapes. He searches for a home, only to find it in an unexpected place. When able and allowed to return to the present, he can choose which tale to tell.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Michèle Brigitte Roberts is the author of fifteen novels, including Ignorance which was nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction and Daughters of the House which won the W.H. Smith Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her memoir Paper Houses was BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week in June 2007. She has also published poetry and short stories, most recently collected in Mud: Stories of Sex and Love. Half-English and half-French, Roberts lives in London and in the Mayenne, France. She is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.

Reviews

[Josefine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this novel up by chance in one of London's many used bookstores, mostly because I have a thing for Virago books... and because it was likened to Virginia Woolf's Orlando on the back, amongst other things.

Unlike any other novel I've read - and I'd like to think I've read plenty - Flesh and Blood finds a way to tell one story and many stories, concerning gender and sexuality, appearance and reality. Many stories that are loosely linked, or one story that's fractured and split into many parts. The style is, to me, truly astonishing, changing for each of the chapters into something else. Poetic and mesmerizing, Michèle Roberts certainly managed to draw me in and fascinate me, and left me with just enough information to want to know so much more about each of the characters she sketches (sometimes very briefly).

[tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was beautiful and i had no idea wtf was going on. Something about gender and mother/daughter relationships. Beautiful and violent and i hope to read it again and understand more

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

You're hungry now, you look around for a picnic spot. On your left, just inside an overgrown meadow thick with marigolds, is a tumbledown bread oven, with a domed roof, like a tiny mosque. You settle yourself here to eat your slice of salty white cheese, bracelet of bread sprinkled with black poppy dots, handful of cracked green olives scented with lemon peel and crushed coriander seeds and garlic, couple of blue figs. Then you fall asleep, full of food, and the sun's heat, and the harshly sweet smell of marigolds and grass.

The adjectives that are coming to mind (gorgeous, stunning, remarkable) sound exaggerated, but this truly is an experience. Roberts's writing style is pleasantly old-fashioned, by which I mean seemingly untouched by any MFA-ing of the writing "industry." This is art, real art, and it left me buzzing and slightly baffled (did Fred/Frederica really kill his/her mother, or is this a Freudian metaphor??). It will reward re-reading, like any classic.

[may · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unlike any other book I've ever read. Roberts writing style is so unique and intriguing, there were so many moments in the book that I had to close it and put it down to process what I had read. The reader almost got to play a part in the story by linking the tales together and solving mysteries. This book truly left me wanting more, I have so many unanswered questions. Would highly recommend this if you are a person who often gets bored easily in books and enjoys shorts stories with historical aspects.

[Nic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fractured stories-within-stories tale that calls to mind Angela Carter and undoubtedly other, less lazy comparisons. Mixture of settings in terms of times and places, protagonist(s) that may or may not be one person reinventing themselves. Disturbing and dazzling.

[Tess]

DNF

[Glyn Pope · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent novel. Well written. Thought provoking. Thoroughly recommended.