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Common Knowledge

Canonical name: Pears, Tim
Birthdate: 1956-11-15
Gender: male
Nationality: UK
Places of residence: Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, UK
Occupations: novelist
Awards and honors: Lannan Literary Award (Fiction, 1996)
Agent: Victoria Hobbs (AM Heath)
Short biography: Tim Pears - Short Biography - 2005

Born in 1956, Tim Pears grew up in Devon, left school at sixteen and worked in a wide variety of jobs: farm labourer, nurse in a mental hospital, pianist's bodyguard, painter and decorator, video maker, college night porter, art gallery manager, and others.
His first novel, In the Place of Fallen Leaves, was published in 1993. It was awarded the Hawthornden Prize and the Ruth Hadden Memorial Award. Also in 1993 Tim Pears graduated from the Direction course at the National Film and Television School. He has written the script for a feature film, Loop, which was released in 1999.
In 1996 Tim received a Lannan Award, in America.
His second novel, In a Land of Plenty, was published in 1997. It was made into a ten part drama series for the BBC by Sterling Pictures (with TalkBack Productions) and broadcast in 2001.
A Revolution of the Sun was published in 2000, Wake Up in 2002, and Blenheim Orchard in 2007 by Bloomsbury.
These novels have been variously published in America, France, Germany and Denmark.
Tim Pears was Writer in Residence at Cheltenham Festival of Literature, 2002-03, and is Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Oxford Brookes University 2006-08. He has taught a good deal of creative writing, most recently at Ruskin College, Oxford, in which city he lives with his wife and children.

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Found: WWII book featuring the Franja Partisan Hospital (adult fiction) in Name that Book (June 2022)

Reviews

Chemistry and Other Stories by Tim Pears

‘’Some things are better left unsaid.’’

A collection of short stories that easily falls into the genre of Literary Fiction, dealing with themes that vary from the ‘writer’s soul’ to the bond between family which can be so strong and yet, so fragile. A volume that kept me hooked - with the exception of a couple of rather mediocre moments - and will definitely appeal to the seasoned lovers of the Short Story genre.

How to Tell a Short Story: A couple tries to compose a short story and succeeds in using very cliche imaginable.

‘’He knew he’d died at three o’clock in the afternoon of Wednesday, July the 29th, 1988, the moment he woke up in the room that he’d come to hate.’’

Blue: A heartfelt, moving account of death and the sweetness of a world seen with unusual clarity. A truly bittersweet story.

Harvest: A woman tries to cope with her husband’s death by obsessively digging her garden.

Fidelity: A story about the process of becoming a short story writer in college. And infidelity…

Invisible Children: A festival of (bad) music, drugs and stoned lunatics provides the ground for repressed feelings to resurface. Do you tell the truth when you have the chance?

Chemistry: The longest story in the collection is a lifeless account of a good-for-nothing family who are the epitome of the atheistic parasites that live at our expense. A useless ‘mother’, a hideous New-Age, stinking feminist of a ‘daughter’ and a son who tries to find himself, surrounded by sex-obsessed maenads. A horrible piece of ‘writing’.

Hunters in the Forest: From smelling feminists we move on to macho idiocy. Three friends believe that a hunting trip in the forest makes up for all the human decency they’re obviously lacking.

Brothers at the Beach: Two estranged and remarkably different brothers decide to spend their summer holidays together, with their families. Words of unspoken and unbearable tension are brewing like the indecisive days of late summer. Quietly haunting, this story makes use of themes we have encountered befire but anages to invoke strong emotions.

Rapture: A father of two watches his daughter play in an indoor play arena. Having to care for his infant son while being vigilant and in conversation with the mother of a boy seem a bit too much for him. A story about fatherhood (a subject that our modern ‘values’ have decided to overlook…) and the struggle of being the ‘’protector’’ which culminates in a memorable (and semi-traumatic) end.

Generation to Generation: The colourful characters of a tower seen through the eyes of a very sympathetic man whose life won’t be completed until he and his wife become parents. Or so she would like him to think…Many layers and many themes can be found in a story that perfectly captures the spirit of the modern family and the financial struggles of our age.

Blood Moon: An idyllic evening on a Greek island is viciously disturbed by a horrible act of violence. But the heroine of the story is not one to be intimidated. Although I think that trigger warnings are stupid (as stupid as the ones who ask for them…), I must say that one needs to be cautious with this story for it is rather disturbing.

Cinema: This story was the most disturbing, in my opinion. A mother leaves her son in a cinema. One film ends, another begins, and the boy is there, unattended, waiting…

Through the Tunnel: A teenage girl has to face her mother’s approaching end and the difficulties of changes, sexual awareness and insecurity. A touching tale without being melodramatic.

Very interesting Author’s Note.

P.S. We are tiiiiiiiiiired to read that ‘’short stories isn’t your cup of tea.’’ Nobody cares. Go away. Shut up. Read a ‘romance’, instead. Idiots.

‘’We drank some more cool beer in the still autumn evening, and looked out over the lights and the traffic in the churning urban ocean below. There are so many of us, that’s what’s so hard to get your head around. A multitude of floundering creatures, plunging, lunging, towards our misbegotten destinies.’’

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/… (more)

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AmaliaGavea | Sep 29, 2024 |

A Revolution of the Sun by Tim Pears

A cross-eyed Devonian party girl relocated to Brixton, a mad scientist experimenting on animals at the Department of Organology in Oxford, a hen-pecked HGV driver from Birmingham, a would-be Cornish wrestler turned cat burglar of no fixed abode, a single father of a disabled son stuck in Crapton Towers in the wastelands of Manchester, an amnesiac who wakes up every morning not knowing who or where he is and a Bradford spinster who works in an animal sanctuary shop.
Bizarre coincidences, tragic events and pure chance throw this motley crew together dramatically changing their lives for better and worse over the course of a revolution of the sun.
A huge cast of supporting characters and extras play their part in keeping the wheels turning and provide welcome light relief to the sometimes sad, dark, pathetic and disturbing pasts and presents of the protagonists.
Humourous and thought-provoking, this is a cleverly constructed and highly detailed novel that has a little bit of everything.
It isn’t the easiest of reads but well worth reading and, apart from a few extremely scientific sections that went right over my head, kept me hooked from start to finish.
What a difference a year makes.… (more)

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geraldine_croft | 1 other review | Mar 21, 2024 |

Run to the Western Shore by Tim Pears

Two young people escape enslavement together and run. One is the daughter of a celtic tribe leader and the other is the slave of Sextus Julius Frontius, Roman governor of Britain.

The two run, not really sure where they are running to, and meet a range of people on their journey: shepherds who feed them; young drunken men who have to be fooled and a couple who hunt, eat and wear beavers. At last they come to the sea only to be met by Frontius.

Olwen is taken away, Quintus remains a slave but having been free no longer wants to be. And so he slips past the guard and heads for the sea where he sets off swimming.

This book reminded me of The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff. It's another journey across land by an enslaved person from a writer who is known, and who I love, for his depictions of the landscape and animals. Like Groff, Pears' characters are there to be put back into history those who have been ignored. By bring people from two different cultures together, Pears can explain the bumps in the land and the behaviours of animals but it does become a bit lecture-y at times.

I didn't feel that this book was as good as his West Country trilogy - it feels more like a young adult book - and whilst it combines all of the things that Pears writes so well about, for me, it misses the mark.… (more)

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allthegoodbooks | 2 other reviews | Jan 2, 2024 |

Run to the Western Shore: ‘Surprising,… by Tim Pears

Proud chieftan's daughter Olwen is made part of a peace settlement with the invading Roman forces. However Olwen has other thoughts and escapes from the camp taking slave Quintus with her. Quintus is from the other side of the empire and has an ear for languages, the two try to flee across Wales learning to survive in the countryside and reach the sea in the hope of finding passage abroad. But Olwen has unleashed the might of Roman revenge on herself and her people.
This is a quite short novel which packs a real punch. The story of the two escapees come lovers is simple enough but woven around this tale are two huge themes. The first one is the inheritance of the Welsh and the Celtic myths of their homeland which are presented as the story of Olwen's forebears and incorporate druidic culture. The second is the love of the Welsh countryside, described in detail and woven around the narrative.… (more)