Are made-up writers important?

[Eric]

Ambione Neckar (pseudonym of Bridget Wurdler, born Poole, Dorset, 1966) has written a series of novels and stories in various genres (historical, magical realist, fairy-tale, literary crime, social engagement) and has begun to make a breakthrough as one of Britain?s more interesting authors in some circles. Not very well known to the general reading public she has nevertheless charmed her small coterie of readers and admirers by her vibrant style and search for truth.


Here are some short descriptions of her work (from the Ambione Neckar Official Website):

The Galician Twins (1990). Set in the late 19th century. Two identical twins are separated at birth, one being taken to Krak?w, the other to Santiago de Compostela. They meet at the age of twenty and have a lesbian affair, not knowing they are sisters. Stunted Opus Dei alcoholics from both cities form a pact to separate the two incestuous lovers and covertly travel to Vienna, where they admire Sezession paintings. The rest of the novel consists of carriage chases through the streets of this city, where the alcoholic would-be religious detectives just miss the women by a street, a door, a bridge. Slowly, it dawns upon the twins that this is no real Vienna but a mock-up, a Potemkin fa?ade. They are being tricked by evil forces beyond their control. [Genre: magical-historical]


The Throgmorton Affair (1994). Set in the early 20th century. Two illegitimate brothers from the illustrious Throgmorton family are separated during childhood, one brought up in Basingstoke, the other in Northampton. They meet at Oxford University and have a dalliance, not knowing they are brothers. They are pursued by the Black Hundreds which movement has sent outriders to the City of Dreaming Spires, who dismember one of the brothers, leaving the other for dead. It is a race against time to find the murderer who has disguised himself as a Gnostic grandmother and lurks in the bowels of the city, where he has hallucinations induced by various drugs. They then go to Vienna to listen to Mahler?s music but are pursued by Jesuits. The ending cannot be revealed. [Genre: literary crime fiction]


Consequences (2001). Set in the mid-20th century. Two siblings meet for the first time in a pub in Naples, and discuss the recent eruption of Mount Etna. The ash and brimstone is already floating through the air from Sicily and it is a race against time before it re-buries Pompeii. While the cloud approaches, the two siblings, whose gender remains unclear, discuss various aspects of Heidegger?s philosophy as it dovetails with the thoughts of the mad genius Marquis de Sade. They then go off to Vienna to examine the architecture there, such as the Karl-Marx Hof, the Haas House, and other deeply classical edifices. During their sojourn they discover the ancient Austrian equivalent of the Holy Grail, a small brightly coloured cup believed to have been transformed from base metal to tin by mysterious forces, introduced to Austria by Christian dervishes. But the wind has changed course and the ash and cinders from Etna no longer threatens to rebury Pompeii but is now heading for Vienna! The two androgynous siblings realise their days are numbered and the last quarter of the novel describes their sexual behaviour from the point of view of various orifices. [Genre: historical horror]


*


Neckar has also written a series of short-stories, set variously in Vienna, Naples, Basingstoke, Cracow, Oxford, Santiago de Compostela, Poole and Northampton, cities where the author has lived at various times in her life, so it could be said that these stories all have something of the autobiographical about them.

The luminescence of her superbly varied and stimulating writing masks the untoward nature of the subject matter of some of her best work, whilst the spatial context of her temporal themes tends to expand the world in which she lives and moves. There is a certain ambience hovering over both her novels and stories, a feeling, an inkling, a whiff of sublimity, Neckar deserves a larger readership and will, no doubt, prove to be one of the great British writers to emerge during the Cameronian Renaissance as it is already termed by some, where bankers will turn to novel-writing and the masses will be oblivious of the cuts, so absorbed will they be in the highly original works of this magnificent writer.

[hdw]

Ambione Neckar (pseudonym of Bridget Wurdler, born Poole, Dorset, 1966) has written a series of novels and stories in various genres (historical, magical realist, fairy-tale, literary crime, social engagement) and has begun to make a breakthrough as one of Britain?s more interesting authors in some circles. Not very well known to the general reading public she has nevertheless charmed her small coterie of readers and admirers by her vibrant style and search for truth.


Here are some short descriptions of her work (from the Ambione Neckar Official Website):

And the band played "Believe it if you like". You should have saved this one for April 1st.

Harry

[Eric]

I don't know what you're talking about, Harry. April? By that time I will have written several chapters of her biography. I was commissed by her publishers to examine her life and writings so as to raise the level of Neckar studies. (The name of the 367-kilometre German river irritatingly disturbs Googling for her; ditto, the car manufacturer).

And what is more, I forcefully agree with the official website, which says pleasant things about her, instead of the usual snide carping by so-called intellectuals. I am sticking by the good Ambione. She is a great author, of tacitly logorrhoeac dimensions, oxymoronic to a tee. I sincerely believe that her works will pan out into a fusion of postmodernism and magical realism, create an orb of sanity in this doom-laden world of ours.

I shall be reviewing a forthcoming collection of her stories, as yet untitled, which is based on a postmodernist take on the book, attributed to Noel Coward, called the "Spangled Unicorn". (Do not confuse the Janet Urdler [without the "w"] listed there with our good author; they are in no way related.) This time, the suite is set in an unnamed country resembling Scandinavia, Catalonia, Nepal and few other countries (i.e. it has mountains) and the stories form a ridge, so to speak, a concatenation of connectedly nebulous narrative.

Now that Wolf Hall has won the Booker with his blockbuster "Hillary Mantell", let us hope that three-four Bookers from now, the good Ambione Neckar will win the day!

[Eric]

Description of a truly great writer:

When young, Abel Sterk-Merwe (born 1940 as Abel-Abednigo Sterk-Merwe-Hoerelooper de la Gardie-Winternag) made rather feeble attempts to deny his Afrikaner (aka Boer) origins and re-invented himself, by way of the elegant nom-de-plume Darren Sausage, a name he thought British enough to cover up his sins. The wry-mouthed, fish-eyed, post-reptilian Sterk-Merwe / Sausage was born in the Karoo but has always falsified his place of birth, pretending he grew up on a gorgeously English-clad vine-rankled street in Cape Town (Afrikaans: Keep-Toun), far away from the shamboks and shams.

On matriculating to post-adolescence, and after obfuscating his connections to the University of the Witwatersrand, Sterk-Merwe, now returning to his pristine name, began writing his as yet unfinished suite of novels about life of a British immigrant to South Africa called A Briton in Colonia. The first patently bloodless-nerveless novel I Was a British Immigrant made his name among the the growing ex-pat British colony of quasi-anti-apartheid activists in the walled streets of Durban. It is bloodless-nerveless in the sense of divinely supreme (no god needs any circulation of the blood; or socks, for that matter) and Sterk-Merwe, an apostle of van Wyk Louw and Opperman, carried on in his dogged forging of a profound reflectatory rendering of the life of Afrikaner-tinged English-speakers in advertising agencies, marketing boards, sales departments and other run-of-the company nooks and crannies of capitalism. He also liked coolish descriptions of the anal penetration of native women on Thursdays.

At the age of 47, Hoerelooper, as was his latest pseudonym at the time, decided he'd had enough of post-Mandala, Montezuman South Africa and moved, with aplomb and a Noble prize under his belt, to the nether reaches of the Aotearoa Archipelago, where he farms, employing recently de-manacled Maori slaves as field workers to sustain his income.

Hoerelooper, as he is now known in his new home, is happy as a sandboy, as can be seen from any photo of the greying guru. For me, he is the greatest, divinest, and sub-supremest novelist, literary critic, translator, essayist, whatever, ever to have been born in the Republic of South Africa.

[Eric]

I am not bumping this thread. Just wanted to say that Ambione Neckar had a fairly torrid affair with Abel Sterk-Merwe, anti-apart-hate activist and expat South African. Her novel Consequences (see above) has a short chapter in the Vienna part of the novel which hints at a two-week bedridden holiday with the guru, who claimed at the time, quite erroneously, to be related to Tracey Emin and British minister Stephen "Tiny" Timms.