Edward Carey's HEAP HOUSE - delightful, eccentric, heartfelt, surprising, philosophical, everything that a novel for children should be.

Eleanor Catton, winner of the Man Book Prize 2013

My favourite novel for children published this year was the marvelously funny and inventive HEAP HOUSE

The Guardian

Astonishing and inventive, it calls out to be read.

- Nicolette Jones, The Sunday Times

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Dark and wildly original urban fantasy tale.

The New York Times

This inventive and continually surprising novel evokes a darkly distorted image of Victorian London which is at once frightening, grotesque and often very funny ... a peculiar but superbly-realised fantasy - the first book in what promises to be an excellent trilogy.

Booktrust - Books We Like

'Roald Dahl by way of Charles Dickens' - Vox.com
'Dark and wildly original urban fantasy tale' - The New York Times
'Delightful, eccentric, heartfelt, surprising, philosophical, everything that a novel for children should be' - Eleanor Catton, winner of the Man Booker Prize 2013
'A rare work of individual brilliance' - Inis magazine

The Iremongers have taken up what was not wanted and wanted it.


Clod is an Iremonger. He lives in the Heaps, a vast sea of lost and discarded items collected from all over London. At the centre is Heap House, a puzzle of houses, castles, homes and mysteries reclaimed from the city and built into a living maze of staircases and scurrying rats. The Iremongers are a mean and cruel family, robust and hardworking, but Clod has an illness. He can hear the objects whispering. His birth object, a universal bath plug, says 'James Henry', Cousin Tummis's tap is squeaking 'Hilary Evelyn Ward-Jackson' and something in the attic is shouting 'Robert Burrington' and it sounds angry.

A storm is brewing over Heap House. The Iremongers are growing restless and the whispers are getting louder. When Clod meets Lucy Pennant, a girl newly arrived from the city, everything changes. The secrets that bind Heap House together begin to unravel to reveal a dark truth that threatens to destroy Clod's world.

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Clod is an Iremonger. He lives in the Heaps, a vast sea of lost and discarded items collected from all over London. At the centre is Heap House, a puzzle of houses, castles, homes and mysteries reclaimed from the city and built into a living maze of staircases and scurrying rats.
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'Delightful, eccentric, heartfelt, surprising, philosophical...' - Eleanor Catton
This gothic tale will appeal to future fans of the GORMENGHAST series and current readers of Lemony Snicket and Diana Wynne Jones

It all really began, all the terrible business that followed, on the day my Aunt Rosamud's door handle went missing. It was my aunt's particular door handle, a brass one. It did not help that she had been all over the mansion the day before with it, looking for things to complain about as was her habit. She had stalked through every floor, she had been up and down staircases, opening doors at every opportunity, finding fault. And during all her thorough investigations she insisted that her door handle was about her, only now it was not. Someone, she screamed, had taken it.

There hadn't been such a fuss since my Great Uncle Pitter lost his safety pin. On that occasion there was searching all the way up and down the building only for it to be discovered that poor old Uncle had had it all along, it had fallen through the ripped lining of his jacket pocket.

I was the one that found it.

They looked at me very queerly afterwards, my family did, or I should say more queerly, because I was never absolutely trusted and was often shooed from place to place. After the safety pin was found it seemed to confirm something more in my family, and some of my aunts and cousins would steer clear of me, not even speaking to me, whilst others, my cousin Moorcus for example, would seek me out. Cousin Moorcus was certain that I had hidden the pin in the jacket myself and down a dim passageway he caught up with me and smacked my head against the wall, counting to twelve as he did it (my age at the time), and lifted me high up onto a coat hook, leaving me suspended there until I was found two hours later by one of the servants.

Great Uncle Pitter was most apologetic after his pin was found and never, I think, properly recovered from the drama. All that fuss, accusing so many people. He died the next spring, in his sleep, his safety pin pinned to his pyjamas.

'But how could you tell, Clod?' my relations wondered. 'How could you know the safety pin was there?'

'I heard it, sir,' I said, 'calling out.'

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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781471401596
Publisert
2014-08-07
Utgiver
Vendor
Hot Key Books
Vekt
286 gr
Høyde
196 mm
Bredde
129 mm
Dybde
28 mm
Aldersnivå
Y, 03
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
416

Forfatter

Om bidragsyterne

Edward Carey is a writer and illustrator born in Norfolk, England, during an April snowstorm. He has written plays for the theatre in Romania, Lithuania and London.
He is the author of OBSERVATORY MANSIONS, ALVA & IRVA, THE IREMONGER TRILOGY (HEAP HOUSE, LUNGDON and FOULSHAM), LITTLE and THE SWALLOWED MAN. He always draws the characters he writes about but getting the illustrations and writing to agree with each other takes him far too long.
He has lived in England, France, Romania, Lithuania, Germany, Denmark and the United States. He currently teaches creative writing at the University of Texas in Austin, which is not near the sea.
Follow Edward on Twitter: @EdwardCarey70 or find out more about his books at edwardcareyauthor.com.