HOWLES, Joaquina Ballard. No More Giants. London: Hutchinson of London / New Authors Limited. 1966. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s black cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the dust jacket designed by Jenny and Tony Williams. This copy inscribed by the author to the front endpaper, ‘for Barbara and Jim. Love and best wishes’ and dated May 2004. A near fine copy. The cloth clean and bright, the binding tight and square, the contents clean and fine throughout. The dust jacket price-clipped, gently crimped to extremities with some lifting of the laminate to front panel fore-edge. Scarce.
A powerful and evocative little gem of a novel recently rediscovered and republished by Boiler House Press. Originally published by Hutchinson in their New Authors series—which also included the likes of Maureen Duffy, J. G. Farrell, Ted Lewis, and Beryl Bainbridge—Howles was a bit of an outcast among these up-and-coming Commonwealth authors, being raised on ranches in Oregon and Nevada before coming to London for university and marrying here. Perhaps this and the novel’s setting were enough for No More Giants to quickly disappear into the abyss of forgotten books. The novel follows fifteen-year-old Jenny and her harsh life on an isolated Nevada ranch, the eerily distant and quarrelsome parents, her existentially anxious aunt, and her younger brother whose friendship seems the only human element to this life. Jenny finds worth through the daily hard work the ranch requires, meaning through the death of cattle, and approaches adulthood through one of the industriously masculine Basque ranchers. Its republishers fairly compare her to Sylvia Plath and Joan Didion, which ‘pierces the myths of the American cowboy with a sharp feminist sensibility and reveals the bleakness, the violence, and the beauty of life in the remote high desert country’. Hits the spot if you’ve just finished watching the impressive Yellowstone, too.
HOWLES, Joaquina Ballard. No More Giants. London: Hutchinson of London / New Authors Limited. 1966. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s black cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the dust jacket designed by Jenny and Tony Williams. This copy inscribed by the author to the front endpaper, ‘for Barbara and Jim. Love and best wishes’ and dated May 2004. A near fine copy. The cloth clean and bright, the binding tight and square, the contents clean and fine throughout. The dust jacket price-clipped, gently crimped to extremities with some lifting of the laminate to front panel fore-edge. Scarce.
A powerful and evocative little gem of a novel recently rediscovered and republished by Boiler House Press. Originally published by Hutchinson in their New Authors series—which also included the likes of Maureen Duffy, J. G. Farrell, Ted Lewis, and Beryl Bainbridge—Howles was a bit of an outcast among these up-and-coming Commonwealth authors, being raised on ranches in Oregon and Nevada before coming to London for university and marrying here. Perhaps this and the novel’s setting were enough for No More Giants to quickly disappear into the abyss of forgotten books. The novel follows fifteen-year-old Jenny and her harsh life on an isolated Nevada ranch, the eerily distant and quarrelsome parents, her existentially anxious aunt, and her younger brother whose friendship seems the only human element to this life. Jenny finds worth through the daily hard work the ranch requires, meaning through the death of cattle, and approaches adulthood through one of the industriously masculine Basque ranchers. Its republishers fairly compare her to Sylvia Plath and Joan Didion, which ‘pierces the myths of the American cowboy with a sharp feminist sensibility and reveals the bleakness, the violence, and the beauty of life in the remote high desert country’. Hits the spot if you’ve just finished watching the impressive Yellowstone, too.
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