Book Talk: A Small Dark Quiet

Wiener Library, Bloomsbury, London

Miranda Gold in conversation with Catherine Taylor

Time: 6:30-8pm

Miranda Gold​ will be discussing her haunting novel, A Small Dark Quiet​, with ​writer, critic and former deputy director of English PEN​, Catherine Taylor​.

Hailed as a ‘Great Jewish Book’ by Jewish Book Week, Gold’s second novel is a story of loss, migration and the search for belonging. Set in London in 1945, ​A Small Dark Quiet ​is ‘challenging and beautifully written’, a story of unresolved grief and intangible loss, exploring how trauma, both preverbal and intergenerational, collapses the boundaries between past and present.

“A bold attempt to portray the greyness of growing up without roots or identity, cast adrift in an uncomprehending and uncertain world.” Caroline Moorhead, Times Literary Supplement

Miranda’s first novel, ​Starlings​, published by Karnac in December 2016, reaches back through three generations to explore how the impact of untold stories about the Holocaust ricochets down the years. Sue Gaisford described Starlings in The Tablet as “a strange, sad, original and rather brilliant first novel, illumined with flashes of glorious writing and profound insight.”

About the speakers:

Miranda Gold ​is a writer based in London. Before turning her focus to fiction, Miranda took the Soho Theatre Course for young writers, where her play, ​Lucky Deck​, was selected for development and performance. ​A Small Dark Quiet ​is her second novel.

Catherine Taylor​ will be chairing this event. ​Catherine is a freelance critic, writer and editor . She was formerly deputy director of English PEN and publisher at the Folio Society and has been a judge on a number of literary prizes including the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize, Guardian First Book Award and European Union Prize for Literature, and most recently the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses. She is currently working on ​The Stirrings,​ a cultural memoir of Sheffield in the 1970s and 80s​.