Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
All characters reduced
The Hills of California - cover

The Hills of California

Jez Butterworth

Publisher: Nick Hern Books

  • 0
  • 1
  • 0

Summary

'This house. It's called "Sea View". It's just I've looked out of every window, and you can't. You can't see the sea.'
Blackpool, 1976. The driest summer in two hundred years. The beaches are packed. The hotels are heaving. In the sweltering backstreets, far from the choc ices and donkey rides, the Webb Sisters are returning to their mother's run-down guest house, as she lies dying upstairs.
When memories from their youth come flooding back, the sisters must confront their past and untangle a web of secrets, betrayals and profound emotional bonds.
Jez Butterworth's play The Hills of California was first performed at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London's West End in 2024, directed by Sam Mendes, and produced by Sonia Friedman Productions and Neal Street. This edition features the revised and definitive version of the play performed during its acclaimed Broadway transfer later that year.
Available since: 04/24/2025.
Print length: 120 pages.

Other books that might interest you

  • Arbitrary Light Bulb An - cover

    Arbitrary Light Bulb An

    Ian Duhig

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Not Yet Available
    Show book
  • A Woman's Voice - An Anthology of short stories by Ugandan Women - cover

    A Woman's Voice - An Anthology...

    Hilda Twongyeirwe, Lillian...

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    A Woman's Voice is a compelling collection of twelve short stories which talk of human relationships, courage and social injustices. The collection offers a variety of readable material based on real, if sometimes controversial and provocative experiences.
    Show book
  • The Poetry of John Gould Fletcher - The first Southern poet to win the Pulitzer Prize - cover

    The Poetry of John Gould...

    John Gould Fletcher

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    John Gould Fletcher was born in Little Rock, Arkansas on the 3rd of January 1886 to a socially prominent family.  
     
    He was educated at Phillips Academy, Andover before advancing to Harvard University, which he attended from 1903 to 1907, before dropping out after his father's death. 
     
    As a young man Fletcher spent many years in England where he became part of the influential Imagist group of poets together with Amy Lowell and Ezra Pound.   
     
    His first marriage came from a resumed relationship with the now married Florence Emily ‘Daisy’ Arbuthnot.  Her adultery with Fletcher was the grounds for her divorce.  They married on 5th July 1916 but later divorced.  
     
    Fletcher first published in 1912, with ‘The Dominant City’ to much praise and admiration and followed this with other well-regarded volumes such as ‘Irradiations: Sand and Spray’, and ‘Goblins and Pagodas’. 
     
    In the late 1920s and 1930s Fletcher became increasingly active with a group of Southern writers and poets known as the Southern Agrarians. They published the classic ‘I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition’. 
     
    Although he was highly regarded as a poet, he was not very prolific.  However, such was the undoubted quality that in 1939 he received the Pulitzer Prize for his work ‘Selected Poems’.  He was the first poet from the south to receive such an accolade.  Fletcher’s other passion and pursuit was as an authority on modern painting, a subject on which he also published. 
     
    A second marriage followed in 1936 to the children’s author, Charlie May Simon.  They built ‘Johnswood’, a residence on the bluffs of the Arkansas River and travelled frequently to New York for shots of modern culture and intellectual stimulation as well as to the American West and South for the climate after Fletcher developed chronic arthritis. 
     
    In 1937 he wrote his autobiography, ‘Life is My Song’. 
     
    His developing passion for his roots and background resulted in the writing of a history of his State and published in 1947; ‘Arkansas’. 
     
    By now Fletcher was suffering from bouts of depression and on 10th May 1950, he committed suicide by drowning himself in a pond near his home in Little Rock, Arkansas.  He was 64.
    Show book
  • Plainwater - Essays and Poetry - cover

    Plainwater - Essays and Poetry

    Anne Carson

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    The poetry and prose collected in Plainwater are a testament to the extraordinary imagination of Anne Carson, a writer described by Michael Ondaatje as "the most exciting poet writing in English today." Succinct and astonishingly beautiful, these pieces stretch the boundaries of language and literary form, while juxtaposing classical and modern traditions.Carson envisions a present-day interview with a seventh-century BC poet, and offers miniature lectures on topics as varied as orchids and Ovid. She imagines the muse of a fifteenth-century painter attending a phenomenology conference in Italy. She constructs verbal photographs of a series of mysterious towns, and takes us on a pilgrimage in pursuit of the elusive and intimate anthropology of water. Blending the rhythm and vivid metaphor of poetry with the discursive nature of the essay, the writings in Plainwater dazzle us with their invention and enlighten us with their erudition.
    Show book
  • One Caribbean Odyssey: Dreams Experiments and Transcendence - Book 1 - cover

    One Caribbean Odyssey: Dreams...

    Narayan Sankar

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    A soul-stirring poetry audiobook that captures the spirit of the Caribbean—and the depth of the human journey. 
    Step into a world of vivid landscapes, introspective moments, and lyrical beauty. One Caribbean Odyssey is more than a poetry collection—it’s a personal voyage through dreams, identity, and self-discovery. From sunlit islands to quiet inner awakenings, each poem pulses with rhythm, emotion, and a search for meaning. 
    Perfect for lovers of Caribbean literature, spiritual poetry, and travel-inspired reflection, this audiobook invites you to slow down, listen deeply, and reconnect—with nature, with memory, and with yourself. 
    If you enjoy the works of Rupi Kaur, Derek Walcott, or Nayyirah Waheed, this poetic odyssey belongs in your headphones.
    Show book
  • The Tempest - cover

    The Tempest

    William Shakespeare

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    The Tempest is a play by English playwright William Shakespeare, probably written in 1610-1611, and thought to be one of the last plays that Shakespeare wrote alone. After the first scene, which takes place on a ship at sea during a tempest, the rest of the story is set on a remote island, where the sorcerer Prospero, a complex and contradictory character, lives with his daughter Miranda, and his two servants: Caliban, a savage monster figure, and Ariel, an airy spirit. The play contains music and songs that evoke the spirit of enchantment on the island. It explores many themes, including magic, betrayal, revenge, and family. In Act IV, a wedding masque serves as a play-within-a-play, and contributes spectacle, allegory, and elevated language.
    Although The Tempest is listed in the First Folio as the first of Shakespeare's comedies, it deals with both tragic and comic themes, and modern criticism has created a category of romance for this and others of Shakespeare's late plays. The Tempest has been put to varied interpretations, from those that see it as a fable of art and creation, with Prospero representing Shakespeare, and Prospero's renunciation of magic signaling Shakespeare's farewell to the stage, to interpretations that consider it an allegory of Europeans colonizing foreign lands.
    Show book