KAY SYRAD - Novelist, poet, freelance writer and educator
The Milliner and the Phrenologist
These are some of the many comments people have made about Kay Syrad’s novel, The Milliner and the Phrenologist:
"...I could not put it down - delighting in the taste of every sentence - was totally inhabited by its world - strange, magical, intense and so beautifully constructed - poignant - it has filled me with images and dreams."
Miranda Tufnell, dance artist
"I just finished Milliner and loved it, loved her, loved the journey of it, loved its relevance to now. And loved the sensory feast of it. Right from the start I'm in my senses, which only becomes more intense as the story proceeds. What a brilliant strategy to link those two personae and professions, both of which are defunct, at least in that form. And how the hats became more elaborate, poetic and metaphoric over time.
[The milliner's] resistance and her reasons are needed more than ever, and the forces represented by phrenology are more powerful than ever. I've lived long enough to observe that when something becomes too large, powerful and out of balance, something emerges to counterbalance it (such as organic agriculture to counter industrial). Alice is that emergent voice."
Rosalyn Driscoll, artist
"...I fell immediately in love with your woman, heard your voice in there, delighted in the extraordinary humour sizzling beneath, revelled in the painted pictures, was blinded by the immediacy of the location."
Miriam Moss, writer
"Your book still has some interesting effects on me. It may be surprising to say that but the way you brought to life characters, feelings, spaces and perceptions resulted in images and experiences that seems to be part of my own lived memory. It is beautiful to walk in London with these images."
Anaïs Tondeur, artist
"...very (darkly) funny while poignant and deeply thought provoking, and even suffocatingly shocking at times."
Mathew Birch, communications consultant/writer
Available from Cinnamon Press, Amazon and bookshops. See Kay’s BLOG for readers' comments about The Milliner and the Phrenologist.
As a novelist and poet Kay Syrad often collaborates on projects with visual artists and dancers. She is a member of the international artists' collective Art in Touch which explores and embodies multi-sensory experience in its cross-media installations. http://www.artintouch.co.uk/page3.htm