Author(s): David Wheatley

Novel | Ireland | Britain | CB Editions

Stretto is both a novel of travel and migration, moving between Ireland, England and Scotland over a twenty-year period, and an exploration of the nature of self and reality. Reconnecting with the modernist energies of Joyce and Beckett, Stretto is a radical and audacious novel.

Review: 'David Wheatley has composed a text so intricately figured, made out of the tones and notes and embellishments of family life and of work and the many-faceted elements of the imagination, that it reflects precisely the impetus and forward motion of the musical movement its title describes. Each section is a bar of poetry both fitted within and overlaying the prose that describes it; each page and a half is measured to sing out exactly in the key and time signature to which it has been set. Wondrous.' (Kirsty Gunn)

Author Biography: David Wheatley was born in Dublin and is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently The President of Planet Earth (Carcanet). His other publications include a critical study, Contemporary British Poetry (Palgrave), and, as co-editor with Ailbhe Darcy, The Cambridge History of Irish Women's Poetry. He has written for London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, Literary Review and Poetry Review. He lives with his family in rural Aberdeenshire.