Spill Simmer Falter Wither by Sara Baume

A young child gets caught up in the fight. They’re on a walk one day when One Eye attacks another dog. This is reflected in how he behaves with One Eye.

He always runs from his problems and pushes memories away before they can upset him. He seems traumatized and unwilling to remember anything. Ray’s main problem is that he refuses to confront whatever happened with his family in the past. She portrays what it’s like to live a deeply lonely life where your past doesn’t matter because no one is interested in getting to know you, and where it seems you’re too old to start over. Baume deliberately keeps much of Ray hidden so that the revelations we do learn are more poignant and forceful. Readers learn very little about Ray’s background and whether anything in his life caused him to feel this way. When he walks down the street, he feels like no one wants to notice him, like he’s a dark spot on someone else’s day. He often feels lonely and isolated, and he doesn’t have anyone who cares about him. Spill Simmer Falter Witheris her debut novel. She participated in the International Writing Program’s Fall Residency at the University of Iowa in 2015.

Baume is an Irish novelist who received a Literary Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The novel won the 2015 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and the 2016 Kate O’Brien Award. The book received rave reviews upon publication, and Baume was heralded as a major new voice in contemporary fiction. First published in 2015, it tells the story of a lonely man and the outcast dog he finds companionship with. Spill Simmer Falter Wither is a contemporary novel by Sara Baume.

Spill Simmer Falter Wither by Sara Baume