Bolt from the Blue

Jeremy Cooper

• Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781913097462
• eBook ISBN: 9781913097479
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

In  Bolt from the Blue, Jeremy Cooper, the winner of the 2018 Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize, charts the relationship between a mother and daughter over the course of thirty-odd years. In October 1985, Lynn moves down to London to enrol at Saint Martin's School of Art, leaving her mother behind in a suburb of Birmingham. Their relationship is complicated, and their primary form of contact is through the letters, postcards and emails they send each other periodically, while Lynn slowly makes her mark on the London art scene. A novel in epistolary form,  Bolt from the Blue captures the waxing and waning of the mother-daughter relationship over time, achieving a rare depth of feeling with a deceptively simple literary form.

14

BOLT FROM THE BLUE

1 OCT 85

Mum

Busy, brief.

Arrived safely and found the college digs easily enough.

Direct by 19 bus to St Martin’s.

St Martin’s College of Art! How about that!!

I feel … I feel happy.

Love

Lynn xx

7 OCT 85

Mum

Me again.

It’s great here: London, the school, the students.

I feel at home. It’s where I’m meant to be.

Already into a routine. You know how I need routine.

For the first few days I couldn’t find any time to read my novel-of-the-moment, which worried me. Now, if nothing else, I’ve at least thirty-five minutes twice a day on the top deck of the bus to and from St Martin’s. To bury myself in a story.

Decided to tackle Doris Lessing.

Not ‘tackle’, that makes it sound a chore. It’s not. Not at all. She’s wonderful. I meant that I intend to read several, beginning at her first, The Grass is Singing, then move straight on to The Golden Notebook, which is the one I’m most looking forward to. Finishing off with The Good Terrorist, just out in paperback.

With the scholarship, I’m able to buy every book I read – second-hand if necessary – and will begin to make my own grown-up library.

Most of the teachers are practising artists and understand 15 that the point is to encourage and support, not tell.

Midwives not policemen.

So refreshing after the drag of eleven-plus and O-levels and A-levels, and the portfolio and interviews for here.

No more exams, ever! It’s all coursework, and assessment of stuff made. Not a problem.

I think so, anyway.

Must rush.

Love

Lynn

17 OCT 85

Mum

Have you got the correct address? Lynn Gallagher (First Year), St Martin’s College of Art, 107-109 Charing Cross Road, London WC2H 0EB. Each student has her own pigeonhole, where event notices and timetables and letters are placed twice a day. Except I haven’t received a single letter.

Nothing to tell you. I’m not going to write into thin air.

Lynn x

28 OCT 85

Mother

Take a jump.

Lynn

[Written in black ink capital letters on the message side of a Leeds Postcard, the front with a field of grey pound signs overlaid in block lettering with the slogan: I DON’T GIVE A SHIT WHAT YOUR HOUSE IS WORTH.] 16

Dear Lynn

Sorry, love, haven’t been feeling too good. Taken on more shifts at the pub, now that you’re not here in the evenings. It’ll sort itself out.

Glad to hear you’re settling in.

You’re my star.

Lots of love

Mum

P.S. Great card. Money, that’s all anyone thinks about, isn’t it?

3 NOV 85

Dear Mum

We’re making postcards at St Martin’s.

B-NEGATIVE painted in my own dark red blood! Not a cow’s!

My tutor liked it a lot. Now it’s yours.

Love

L x

[Posted the postcard in an envelope, to prevent damage. Strange now to handle something I made over thirty years ago and had not seen again until clearing Mum’s flat. Like most of my past work, I remembered precisely how it looked.]

Dear Lynn

Dead right title for you! 17

Wasn’t it hysterical when the school nurse told us you were this rare blood type? They were always calling you to give blood.

Useful earner.

I’ve settled in.

To my new hours at The Blind Traveller.

And to controlling the booze.

Ankles swollen from the extra-standing. Better than they were.

You get used to anything, in the end.

See you.

Love

Mum

19 NOV 85

M

Beware of apples’n’onions bunions!

How’s Chippy puss?

Does she miss me?

I miss her!

L xx

[Embarrassing Kardorama postcard of a fluffy grey kitten playing with a large ball of yellow wool.]

18 DEC 85

Mum

I’m afraid I won’t be home for Christmas or New Year.

A friend has invited me to stay at her parents’ place, near Exeter. Sounds quite a large house.

She’s got a car, so we’ll be driving down

Her father runs the family firm of stockbrokers. Four days a week in the City. That kind of stuff. 18

As it’s your busy time at the pub you’ll barely notice.

Love

Lynn

20 JAN 86

Mum

How are you? Was Christmas OK?

I’ve caught a cold, touch of flu perhaps. Never mind, it’ll pass.

Full of ideas for work

Lynn xx

[Written on the classic Guerrilla Girls postcard of a billboard in New York showing the Mona Lisa with a green gag, the black and pink capital letters reading: First they want to take away a woman’s right to choose. Now they’re censoring art.]

Dear Lynn

Xmas was fine, thanks. Plenty of visitors, people dropping by. At the pub, mostly,

Bought myself a new radio in the sales. And fancy underwear.

Yeah, I’m in pretty good shape. Considering.

Didn’t have to do Christmas turkey or anything. Don’t know why I bothered all those years.

Love

Mother

P.S. The cat’s fine too. No cat has ever missed anybody. Nor any other cat, as far as I can see. Food and warmth all they go for.

19

15 FEB 86

Mum

Thought it was Christmas at home which I find impossible. Bliss compared with Devon!

Safest, I’d say, to pretend the visit never happened.

Except I’ve been trying to blank it out, and can’t. So, need to get it off my chest. To you, of course!

One of my lists!

That fucking family. Frisky, freezing, freaky, fraudulent, frantic, foxy, foul, fossilised, formal, forlorn, footling, foolish, foetid, fly-blown, fleshy, flatulent, flash, flaky, filthy, fiendish, fidgety, feeble, faulty, fat, fatal, farcical, false.

Reverse alfabetical!

Jerk of a father made a pass at me.

They have an outdoor swimming pool. Heated, in winter!

On the way out, this breed. They must be. Surely?

I’m going to ignore Christmas completely from now on.

Love

Lynn

16 FEB 86

Dear Mum

There’s a teacher at St Martin’s who bangs on about contact-making, how important it is for our careers. Weird!

Since when did being an artist become a career?

If it is then I don’t want to be an artist. I do stuff, that’s all.

...

Table of contents

• PRAISE
• TITLE PAGE
• DEDICATION
• CONTENTS
• BOLT FROM THE BLUE
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• COPYRIGHT