You've heard, I'm sure, of the distinction between "street smarts" and "book smarts", which presupposes that someone who reads a lot or is good at math or whatever has absolutely zero common sense. Aside from the fact that it all depends on what books you're reading – and sidestepping a lengthy side discussion about why a certain brand of heartland Republicans seem to think education is bad … this book kind of exemplifies this. Nell Stevens is obviously very book smart – but the fact that she actually survived this project she describes surprises me deeply.

Now, I've often thought that if I could only have a substantial chunk of time to myself, with no mundane work-sleep schedule to adhere to (meaning enough money to live for a few weeks or months or whatever without working), I could absolutely finish my book. (The times I've been unemployed don't count, because between the time needed for job-hunting and the substantial stress of <I>being</i> unemployed undid the benefits of having free time.) (That's my story, anyway.) It worked for another Nell, after all - Nelle Harper Lee, that is; her friends gave her an amazing gift of time, and I think it could be said she used it well. So it's not completely ridiculous that Nell Stevens decided that what she needed in order to write her novel was three months, completely alone, on an island in the Falklands, about as close as you can get to absolutely zero distractions.

Except it is completely ridiculous.

She plans it out meticulously. She can only bring so much baggage with her, so she organizes reading matter, clothing – and food, because this island she is going to is uninhabited for most of the year – like the time of year she will be going (winter, inexplicably) – and the only food she will have is what she brings with her. And here's where her lack of "street smarts" becomes dismayingly obvious. "It works out that I will eat 1,085 calories per day", she says.

Per WebMD.com, it's recommended that a woman aged 19-30 take in 2000 calories if sedentary, 2000-2200 if moderately active, and 2400 if active. And Ms. Stevens is very active during her time on this island, walking what must be miles per day. I didn't make note of how much weight she discovered she had lost when she got home after the adventure – I mean, on Survivor they tend to lose about 10% of their starting weight, and that's only 40 days, with some of those days being much more sedentary than others – but after only a few days even she recognizes that starvation does not lead to clear thought, and when higher brain functions are impaired it's hard to write a novel.

So it's not surprising that at the end of the quarter she does not have a novel completed. What she ends up with is <I>Bleaker House</i>, a sort of memoir/travelogue/picaresque story of her isolation and hunger, and how she handled it. And seagulls. All this is intercut with sketches from the novel-that-never-was, which seem to be well-written and have some life to them … but I can see how it died on the vine.

In the Goodreads summary words like "clever" and "deft humour" and "whimsical" are used to describe the book. Maybe I was in a bad mood when I read it, but I didn't think the story of an extremely unwise and ultimately unproductive trip (though it resulted in this memoir, it did <i>not</i> inspire the author to produce 2,500 words of a novel per day) which ... I'm sorry, it was almost criminally stupid. Whimsical is only a good thing if it doesn't almost kill you.

The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review.

Twenty-seven-year-old Nell Stevens is on a mission. She wants to write a novel. She has taken all of the necessary steps to become a writer, including attending a prestigious writing program at Boston University. But she still hasn't written her novel. She wins a fellowship that allows her to go anywhere in the world to research and write her novel - all expenses paid. She chooses Bleaker Island in the Falklands. Pretty much at the very end of the world. In her memoir, Nell Stevens, details what it was like to live on the very isolated Bleaker Island. From her internet woes to the wicked weather and her furry neighbors, Nell tells us all, including her processes to write the novel she just knows is in there somewhere. Will she be able to write her novel before her time on Bleaker Island is up?

As an aspiring writer I was eager to read Bleaker House. I have probably ten unfinished novels dwelling in my dropbox and have several more unstarted rolling around my pretty little head. Like Nell, I believe if I could just have some time where life doesn't get in the way I could easily finish at least one of them. What I know is that even with the perfect setup - Nell still struggled with putting words on paper. At least the story she wants to put on paper. She peppers her memoir with a few fictional stories that take you all over the world and give you a glimpse of her talent. I really did love Nell's story - it was unique and fun. She met a lot of great people and got to see a part of the world that many people don't even know existed. It also made me realize that the process of following your dreams can be very difficult.

Bottom line - while Nell didn't get the novel she intended to write while she was on Bleaker Island, she did find the material to write a book - Bleaker House. And I am pretty sure that it won't be her last book, either. Definitely a source of inspiration for all of the aspiring writers out there.

Greetings Bookworms!

When I’m confronted with a book that has a penguin on the cover, it’s almost a given that I will read it. Enter Bleaker House: Chasing My Novel to the End of the World by Nell Stevens. My friend and book-enabler Heather (aka Capricious Reader) sent me a link to this book and I wasted zero time in going to NetGalley to procure a copy. That’s right. *I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review consideration. As always, my integrity is worth more than the price of a digital review copy, so you can trust me to be honest. You can start worrying when people start handing me fistfuls of cash along with my free books. Which will happen exactly never. So. There you go.*

In this book, the author runs away to Falklands (on a school supported fellowship) in order to deprive herself of distractions so she can write her novel. She ends up finding that you can’t force the writing of a novel, even in utter isolation. Also she was bad about packing her food which made me as a reader anxious and hungry. Because her calorie count. So bleak. That was the bleakest bit, really, the lack of food. I wish I could blame this on the fact that I read this while pregnant, but no. I don’t like being hungry under any circumstances. There was a lot of useful self discovery and a bit of indulgent navel gazing (but really, who wouldn’t do that when isolated in such a manner?) I just wish there hadn’t been a penguin on the cover. While the author did see penguins on her frequent walks, they didn’t play a particularly integral role in the story. I mean, the author couldn’t have anticipated the level of penguin enthusiast who would be attracted to her book, but I was a bit disappointed when the penguin related capers and friendships I imagined never materialized.

Bottom line? If you’re interested in one writer’s process, definitely check out Bleaker House: Chasing My Novel to the End of the World. If you are more interested in penguin capers, email me and I’ll supply you with a reading list to suit your fancy.

In general, I think memoirs are best told by writers who have a few decades under their belts. A memoir by its very nature tends to gear toward navel-gazing, and it takes a degree of intellectual rigor and self-depecration to pull it off without being dull at best, annoyingly narcissistic at worst. I struggled with this myself, when, at the age of 29, I traveled solo to Beijing for work. During my time there, I tried to make a memoir of it, but upon my return home, the memoir became a novel. I ultimately felt that, at my age, I could tell a story, but my own story wasn't interesting enough to make a memoir.

So I was more than pleasantly surprised by Nell Stevens's Bleaker House, a memoir about the writer's time isolated on the frozen Bleaker Island, with only the angry puffins for company. How she came to be there would be the envy of any young writer. Upon completing their MFA year at Boston University, students are given an unusual opportunity: every student receives a fellowship to pursue his or her writing for three moths anywhere in the world.

When Stevens chooses the tiny, isolated Bleaker Island in the Falklands--in order to get away from everything, to write her novel in solitude and struggle--the director of her MFA program advises against it. Why not Paris? he wants to know. But Stevens is determined to leave behind the distractions of Boston, and of her home city of London, of civilization in general, and be a writer. Getting to the island is difficult, and she is allowed only a very limited amount of luggage. Because the island has no stores and no residents beyond the mostly absent owners of a barely-operating farm, she must bring all of her supplies with her. She allots 1,000 calories per day, mostly in the form of instant oatmeal, raisins, and Ferrero Rocher chocolates.

What emerges from her grueling self-imposed exile is not a novel, but instead this memoir: a blunt and beautifully introspective examination of solitude and the creative process. She discovers that an island of one's own is a far cry from a room of one's own, and a story doesn't necessarily flow just because you've shut out all ordinary distractions. Hunger and loneliness become their distractions, and the time stretching out before her is more harrowing than liberating.

Interspersed throughout the memoir are snippets from Stevens's failed novel. While the fictional interludes serve to show the way life feeds into art, they are the least interesting part of the book, at times feeling like filler. That said, as I read the fictional chapters, it occurred to me that they were bizarrely marketable, and had she finished the novel, it might have proved an easy sell. Instead, she returned home to London and wrote something stranger and more riveting, a hybrid gem of a book that captures the heady, scary, promising feeling of just starting out.

While the failure of the novel vexed the writer, it is to the reader's advantage that Stevens did not write what she set out to write, but something else entirely. The something else entirely is where the beauty and heart of this book lie.

BLEAKER HOUSE by Nell Stevens is all about language, writing and finding oneself. She subtitles this memoir "Chasing My Novel to the End of the World" and describes her experiences during a three month fellowship writing on Bleaker Island in the Falklands. I have to be honest and say I was a little jealous of her ability to get completely away and write in isolation. Granted, she must forego Internet access and lists some "Habits I am being forced to break: Wondering: 'What year was so-and-so born?' .... Or any other general, non-urgent but niggling questions, and looking it up at once. Instead, I start a WORD document listing all the things I'd Google if I could: a sprawling, eclectic list of idle curiosity ...."

I also really enjoyed her observations of the desolation of the Falkland Islands: "I walk for hours and see only monosyllables: cliffs, birds, waves, sand, sheep, rock, moss." Future writers, travel enthusiasts and anyone with an active imagination should read the excerpt from BLEAKER HOUSE provided by the publisher and then turn to the book itself; there is also a Reading Guide for this debut work which will appeal to book groups.

Live link in post: http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/541692/bleaker-house-by-nell-stevens/9780385541558/

In Bleaker House: Chasing My Novel to the End of the World author Nell Stevens writes about spending three months in the Falkland Islands, during the winter, all in pursuit of writing her first novel. This memoir is a very highly recommended compilation of her life, visiting the Falklands, and her first book.

After completing an MFA degree at Boston University, Nell Stevens is offered a fellowship that allows her to live, all expenses paid, anywhere in the world while she writes her first book. Others may choose Paris or a retreat, but Stevens decides to go to Bleaker Island in the Falklands, located on the southern tip of South America in the Antarctic waters of the South Atlantic - during the winter months. She chose this because she felt like it would be the perfect way to eliminate distractions and help her focus on writing her novel.

After staying for several weeks in Stanley , the capital (which has little to offer, but does have seven pubs) she learns about the residents great mistrust of Argentinians and journalists, and the careful records kept of family trees due to the limited population. Stevens then proceeds on to Bleaker Island where she is the only guest in a guest house. The island is either population 1 (Stevens) or three when the owners are on the island.

"Why do you do it to yourself?" wonders her mother. A novelist friend helps answer the question, "That's the thing about being a writer. Every bad experience you have is good material."

The only way for Stevens to get to Bleaker is by air, which means that Stevens has to pack in all her provisions for her stay and there is a weight limit. She has carefully packed enough food for 1,085 calories a day, which requires counting out her daily ration of raisins and almonds. On the island she tries to write her novel surrounded by sheep, penguins, caracara birds, and cattle on the stormy, snow and sleet covered wind swept island. And she does start a novel - a terribly bad novel.

I found Bleaker House entertaining and engaging. In it Stevens creates a mosaic of her writing life. She has compiled pieces of ideas together among the stories of her travels, observations, and experiences on Bleaker that include snippets from other fictional writing she's done, life experiences and stories, writing while at a job, and parts of the novel she wrote on Bleaker. While she doesn't come away with a good novel, she did leave the island with a book. It is a wonderfully insightful and honest look at the creative struggles behind writing a novel that includes wry humor, writing advice she's received, personal anecdotes, and how you can't escape yourself even when you are the only one on a remote island.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Knopf Doubleday.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1921772106
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/on2/23/17

This book definitely shows us the many emotions of a writer. While I enjoyed her descriptions of the islands and her carefully laid out plan, I didn't enjoy the little short stories sprinkled throughout. I wasn't sure what was going on there, but maybe it was all part of her process of writing.
Rather like a memoir and a travel journal.

A good book for struggling writers. They may feel right at home with Bleaker House.

When I first saw this book and read the blurb, I was definitely questioning how a person could spend three months by themselves on a cold island in the Falklands and have something to write a book about. Then I kept seeing all the literary e-mails I get talking about it and how good it was, etc. So, I decided to request and, if approved, see for myself. Well, I was approved.

So, when it came time, I sat down and started reading the book. Not once did I tell myself this was boring, stupid or lame. I found myself enjoying it. It was actually interesting and entertaining. I didn't even want to put it down. As a matter of fact, when it was over, I still didn't want to put it down. Reading her counting her raisins and Ferro Roche candies and keeping watch over that potato. Knowing it was her saving grace if she did run out of her food. Reading about how many layers of clothes she had on that day. I know I can't write with as much interest as she did, but somehow, she made it work. She also had a couple of fiction short stories weaved in that she working on in real life while she was there. She never did finish them, grrr. Ha!!

I can't really tell you how the author made it work, but work it did. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and would certainly recommend it.

Thanks to Doubleday Books for approving my request and to Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest review.