A blackly comic campus satire combined with a heart-breaking family mystery, The Falling Sky brilliantly mixes fiction and astronomy into a fascinating, compelling and moving narrative. Jeanette is a young, solitary post-doctoral researcher who has dedicated her life to studying astronomy. Struggling to compete in a prestigious university department dominated by egos and incompetents, and caught in a cycle of brief and unsatisfying affairs, she travels to a mountain-top observatory in Chile to focus on her research. There Jeanette stumbles upon evidence that will challenge the fundamentals of the universe, drawing her into conflict with her colleagues and the scientific establishment, but also casting her back to the tragic loss that defined her childhood. As the implications of her discovery gather momentum, and her relationships spiral out of control, Jeanette's own grip on reality is threatened, finally forcing her to confront the hidden past. Pippa Goldschmidt's bittersweet debut novel blends black comedy, heart-breaking tragedy and fascinatingly accessible science, in this intricate and beautiful examination of one woman's disintegration and journey to redemption.
Long-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award Pippa Goldschmidt, author of the acclaimed novel The Falling Sky, brings together an outstanding collection of short stories on the theme of science and its impact on all our lives. In turns witty, accessible, fascinating and deeply moving, Goldschmidt demonstrates her mastery of the short form as well as her ability to draw out scientific themes with humane and compelling insight. Goldschmidt allows us to spy on Bertolt Brecht, as he rewrites his play Life of Galileo with Charles Laughton after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She introduces us to Albert Einstein as he deals with the loss of his first child, Liesel. We meet Robert Oppenheimer scheming against his tutor, Professor Patrick Blackett, at Cambridge University, having fallen in love with Blackett's wife. She tells the story of a female university student starting a love affair with her lecturer paralleled alongside the 'relationship' between Alice and Bob, two imaginary figures that symbolise the theory of relativity. Goldschmidt's scope can be epic, at other times intimate, providing a forensic examination of relationships and the forces that influence them.
“I didn’t ask her if it had been Walt Whitman and his declaration that he was vast and contained multitudes that she’d read as she lay on the bed in the boarding house at Dover, but it would have been appropriate, because: She was an anti-Zionist who went to Israel for her holidays. She read the Telegraph and voted Labour. She ate bacon for breakfast and then cooked kosher lunches at the club for other Jewish pensioners. She said she was disappointed in me when I explained how to jiggle coins out of public phones, yet she stole small plants from Tel-Aviv airport and smuggled them back to England in her handbag.” Pippa Goldschmidt’s protagonists have a special way of observing the world: intelligent as they undoubtedly are, they all suffer from a weird and warped lack of understanding certain parts of life. It is science that helps them regulate the world they live in. It is science that brings chaos upon them. Goldschmidt connects realism, hyperrealism, surrealism, satire, subtle political statements, anti-Semitic tendencies, and the gender gap in a unique and surprising way. Pippa Goldschmidt is an important new voice in contemporary fiction. Pippa Goldschmidt grew up in London, and now lives in Edinburgh. She is a graduate of the renowned Masters course in creative writing at the University of Glasgow. She has a PhD in astronomy and worked as an astronomer for several years at Imperial College, followed by posts in the civil service including working in outer space policy. In 2012 Pippa was awarded a prestigious Scottish Book Trust/Creative Scotland New Writers Award. From 2008 to 2012 she was writer in residence at the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum, based at the University of Edinburgh. The Falling Sky is her first novel and was runner-up in the Dundee International Book Prize.
“Furthest South”: The furthest point south, the darkest of winters. After his girlfriend leaves him, the unnamed narrator tries to take his mind off things by working on a scientific base in the Antarctic. Seven months cut off from the rest of the world, it’s like being in outer space. With the final lot of overwintering scientists, the person he wishes to see least arrives on the base. *** “BBC Television Studios, 2013”: She is asked to represent her team in a BBC TV interview. A reason to be pleased? “Better wear a skirt,” she is told. - A young woman’s dark but funny revenge taken on the chiefly male world of science.
A blackly comic campus satire combined with a heart-breaking family mystery, The Falling Sky brilliantly mixes fiction and astronomy into a fascinating, compelling and moving narrative. Jeanette is a young, solitary post-doctoral researcher who has dedicated her life to studying astronomy. Struggling to compete in a prestigious university department dominated by egos and incompetents, and caught in a cycle of brief and unsatisfying affairs, she travels to a mountain-top observatory in Chile to focus on her research. There Jeanette stumbles upon evidence that will challenge the fundamentals of the universe, drawing her into conflict with her colleagues and the scientific establishment, but also casting her back to the tragic loss that defined her childhood. As the implications of her discovery gather momentum, and her relationships spiral out of control, Jeanette's own grip on reality is threatened, finally forcing her to confront the hidden past. Pippa Goldschmidt's bittersweet debut novel blends black comedy, heart-breaking tragedy and fascinatingly accessible science, in this intricate and beautiful examination of one woman's disintegration and journey to redemption.
Long-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award Pippa Goldschmidt, author of the acclaimed novel The Falling Sky, brings together an outstanding collection of short stories on the theme of science and its impact on all our lives. In turns witty, accessible, fascinating and deeply moving, Goldschmidt demonstrates her mastery of the short form as well as her ability to draw out scientific themes with humane and compelling insight. Goldschmidt allows us to spy on Bertolt Brecht, as he rewrites his play Life of Galileo with Charles Laughton after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She introduces us to Albert Einstein as he deals with the loss of his first child, Liesel. We meet Robert Oppenheimer scheming against his tutor, Professor Patrick Blackett, at Cambridge University, having fallen in love with Blackett's wife. She tells the story of a female university student starting a love affair with her lecturer paralleled alongside the 'relationship' between Alice and Bob, two imaginary figures that symbolise the theory of relativity. Goldschmidt's scope can be epic, at other times intimate, providing a forensic examination of relationships and the forces that influence them.
“I didn’t ask her if it had been Walt Whitman and his declaration that he was vast and contained multitudes that she’d read as she lay on the bed in the boarding house at Dover, but it would have been appropriate, because: She was an anti-Zionist who went to Israel for her holidays. She read the Telegraph and voted Labour. She ate bacon for breakfast and then cooked kosher lunches at the club for other Jewish pensioners. She said she was disappointed in me when I explained how to jiggle coins out of public phones, yet she stole small plants from Tel-Aviv airport and smuggled them back to England in her handbag.” Pippa Goldschmidt’s protagonists have a special way of observing the world: intelligent as they undoubtedly are, they all suffer from a weird and warped lack of understanding certain parts of life. It is science that helps them regulate the world they live in. It is science that brings chaos upon them. Goldschmidt connects realism, hyperrealism, surrealism, satire, subtle political statements, anti-Semitic tendencies, and the gender gap in a unique and surprising way. Pippa Goldschmidt is an important new voice in contemporary fiction. Pippa Goldschmidt grew up in London, and now lives in Edinburgh. She is a graduate of the renowned Masters course in creative writing at the University of Glasgow. She has a PhD in astronomy and worked as an astronomer for several years at Imperial College, followed by posts in the civil service including working in outer space policy. In 2012 Pippa was awarded a prestigious Scottish Book Trust/Creative Scotland New Writers Award. From 2008 to 2012 she was writer in residence at the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum, based at the University of Edinburgh. The Falling Sky is her first novel and was runner-up in the Dundee International Book Prize.
“Furthest South”: The furthest point south, the darkest of winters. After his girlfriend leaves him, the unnamed narrator tries to take his mind off things by working on a scientific base in the Antarctic. Seven months cut off from the rest of the world, it’s like being in outer space. With the final lot of overwintering scientists, the person he wishes to see least arrives on the base. *** “BBC Television Studios, 2013”: She is asked to represent her team in a BBC TV interview. A reason to be pleased? “Better wear a skirt,” she is told. - A young woman’s dark but funny revenge taken on the chiefly male world of science.
A history of the English music festival is long overdue. Dr Pippa Drummond argues that these festivals represented the most significant cultural events in provincial England during the nineteenth century and emphasizes their particular importance in the promotion and commissioning of new music. Drawing on material from surviving accounts, committee records, programmes, contemporary pamphlets and reviews, Drummond shows how the festivals responded to and reflected the changing social and economic conditions of their day. Coverage includes a chronological overview documenting the history of individual festivals followed by a detailed exploration of such topics as performers and performance practice, logistics and finance, programmes and commissioning, together with information concerning the composition and provenance of festival choirs and orchestras. Also discussed are the effects of improved transport and new technologies on the festivals, sacred and secular conflicts, gender issues, the role of philanthropy, the nature of patronage and the changing social status of festival audiences. The book will also be of interest to social, economic and local historians.
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