Product details
- ISBN 9781471401565
- Weight: 474g
- Dimensions: 35 x 205mm
- Publication Date: 05 Sep 2013
- Publisher: Hot Key Books
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
- Age Group: Ages 12+
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'Roald Dahl by way of Charles Dickens' - Vox.com
'Dark and wildly original urban fantasy tale' - The New York Times
'Delightful, eccentric, heartfelt, surprising, philosophical, everything that a novel for children should be' - Eleanor Catton, winner of the Man Booker Prize 2013
'A rare work of individual brilliance' - Inis magazine
The Iremongers have taken up what was not wanted and wanted it.
Clod is an Iremonger. He lives in the Heaps, a vast sea of lost and discarded items collected from all over London. At the centre is Heap House, a puzzle of houses, castles, homes and mysteries reclaimed from the city and built into a living maze of staircases and scurrying rats. The Iremongers are a mean and cruel family, robust and hardworking, but Clod has an illness. He can hear the objects whispering. His birth object, a universal bath plug, says 'James Henry', Cousin Tummis's tap is squeaking 'Hilary Evelyn Ward-Jackson' and something in the attic is shouting 'Robert Burrington' and it sounds angry.
A storm is brewing over Heap House. The Iremongers are growing restless and the whispers are getting louder. When Clod meets Lucy Pennant, a girl newly arrived from the city, everything changes. The secrets that bind Heap House together begin to unravel to reveal a dark truth that threatens to destroy Clod's world.
Edward Carey is a writer and illustrator born in Norfolk, England, during an April snowstorm. He has written plays for the theatre in Romania, Lithuania and London.
He is the author of OBSERVATORY MANSIONS, ALVA & IRVA, THE IREMONGER TRILOGY (HEAP HOUSE, LUNGDON and FOULSHAM), LITTLE and THE SWALLOWED MAN. He always draws the characters he writes about but getting the illustrations and writing to agree with each other takes him far too long.
He has lived in England, France, Romania, Lithuania, Germany, Denmark and the United States. He currently teaches creative writing at the University of Texas in Austin, which is not near the sea.
Follow Edward on Twitter: @EdwardCarey70 or find out more about his books at edwardcareyauthor.com.
