The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea

Mark Haddon

Picador, 2006 - Poetry - 60 pages

That Mark Haddon's first book after The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was a poetry collection perhaps came as a surprise to his legions of fans; that it is a collection of such virtuosity and range did not. The gifts so admired in Haddon's prose are in strong evidence here too - the humanity of his voices, the dark humour and the uncanny ventriloquism - but Haddon is also a writer of considerable seriousness, lyric power and surreal invention, and The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea combines bittersweet love-lyrics, lucid and bold new versions of Horace, comic set-pieces, lullabies, wry postmodern shenanigans (including a note from the official board of censors on "18" certificate poetry), and an entire John Buchan novel condensed to five pages. Consolidating Haddon's reputation as our most powerful myth-weavers and spell-makers, The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea also confirms him as one of the most outrageous and freewheeling imaginations at work in contemporary literature.

About the author

Author and screenwriter Mark Haddon was born in Northampton, U.K. in 1962. He received a B.A. in English from Merton College and a MSc in English Literature from Edinburgh University. Since 1996, he has worked on numerous television projects. He has won two BAFTAs and The Royal Television Society Best Children's Drama for Microsoap, which he created and wrote 12 out of 25 episodes. He also wrote the screenplay for the BBC television adaption of Fungus the Bogeyman. He has written fifteen children's books including the Agent Z series. In 1994, he was shortlisted for the Smarties Prize for The Real Porky Philips. He won the 2003 Whitbread Book of the Year Award for his novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which provides a realistic insight into what it is like to have autism. He currently lives in Oxford with his family.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea
• Author: Mark Haddon
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Picador, 2006
• ISBN: 0330440039, 9780330440035
• Length: 60 pages
• Subjects: Poetry / General