I have a handful of ‘want’ alerts set up at abebooks – books that aren’t currently available anywhere, at least not affordably, so that I get an email when they turn up. It’s how I got my hands on Cynthia Asquith’s novels, it’s how I’ve added some rarer A.A. Milne and E.M. Delafield titles to my shelves, and numerous other books have wended their way to me via those exciting ‘We’ve found the book you wanted’ emails to my inbox.
I don’t remember why or when I added Iris Barry’s Here Is Thy Victory to that list, but I daresay I must have been sold by the description of the novel somewhere: it is about a plague of involuntary immortality. That’s so up my street – something fantastic, but in the real world, and able to comment on human behaviour and anxieties – and I patiently waited until it could be mine.
Even better, as you’ll see if you swipe in this Instagram link – it came signed by the author!
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A very worthy addition to Project 24!
Congratulations on your success.It is a pleasure to read this.
How lovely! I’ve had alerts on books in the past and it’s always a delight when you can get a reasonably priced copy of a gem you’ve been after!
A nice big one, too! Better value out of your few books for the year than a slim volume … I remember the joy of hunting down my collection of Iris Murdoch first editions, though at least one I came upon in a local charity shop!
It is, but I think from those days of thick pages and big fonts, so might not actually be a very long novel :D