{"product_id":"threads-the-delicate-life-of-john-craske","title":"Threads: The Delicate Life of John Craske","description":"\u003cp\u003eWinner of the East Anglian Book of the Year 2015 Winner of the New Angle Book Prize 2017  John Craske  a Norfok fisherman  was born in 1881 and in 1917  when he had just turned thirty-six  he fell seriously ill. For the rest of his life he kept moving in and out of what was described as a stuporous state. In 1923 he started making paintings of the sea and boats and the coastline seen from the sea  and later  when he was too ill to stand and paint  he turned to embroidery  which he could do lying in bed. His embroideries were also the sea  including his masterpiece  a huge embroidery of The Evacuation of Dunkirk.  Very few facts about Craske are known  and only a few scattered photographs have survived  together with accounts by the writer Sylvia Townsend Warner and her lover Valentine Ackland  who discovered Craske in 1937. So - as with all her books - Julia Blackburns account of his life is far from a conventional biography. Instead it is a quest which takes her in many strange directions - to fishermens cottages in Sheringham  a grand hotel fallen on hard times in Great Yarmouth and to the isolated Watch House far out in the Blakeney estuary; to Cromer and the bizarre story of Einsteins stay there  guarded by dashing young women in jodhpurs with shotguns.  Threads is a book about life and death and the strange country between the two where John Craske seemed to live. It is also about life after death  as Julias beloved husband Herman  a vivid presence in the early pages of the book  dies before it is finished.  In a gentle meditation on art and fame; on the nature of time and the fact of mortality; and illustrated with Craskes paintings and embroideries  Threads shows  yet again  that Julia Blackburn can conjure a magic that is spellbinding and utterly her own.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44945920229429,"sku":"ByrdShop_0099582198","price":98.85,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780099582199.jpg?v=1769915336","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/threads-the-delicate-life-of-john-craske","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}