ULVERTON PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Adam Thorpe | 432 pages | 07 Jan 2013 | Vintage Publishing | 9780099573449 | English | London, United Kingdom Ulverton by Adam Thorpe A spokesman for the British Geological Survey said that earthquakes of around that magnitude occur roughly once a year in Britain. The name Ulverston , first recorded in the Domesday Book as Ulurestun , is derived from two elements. The loss of the 'W' in Wulfhere can be attributed to the historical Scandinavian influence in the region. The town's market charter granted in by Edward I [10] was for a market every Thursday. Modern Ulverston retains its market-town appearance. Market days are now held on Thursdays and Saturdays. The present-day Saturday market includes in the summer months craft stalls, charity stalls and locally produced wares on "Made in Cumbria" stalls. Town Bank grammar school was established in the town in from a benefaction by Thomas Fell. Historically, the parish included other chapelries or townships that later became separate civil parishes: Blawith , Church Coniston, Egton with Newland , Lowick , Mansriggs , Osmotherley , Subberthwaite and Torver. From to the town served as an urban district in the administrative county of Lancashire. It includes a sixth form college that draws around students from Ulverston and the surrounding areas. Ulverston railway station , a short walk from the town centre, lies on the Furness Line between Barrow- in-Furness and Lancaster , which ultimately leads on to Manchester Airport. All services are operated by Northern. The town is served by several bus services, including the X6 between Kendal and Barrow-in-Furness, via Grange over Sands. The X12 runs from Coniston and passes through the village of Spark Bridge. Ulverston is twinned with Albert in France. Ulverston has various festivals during the year that entitle it to the description "festival town". This event culminates in a stage performance and fireworks in Ford Park. It was organised locally for the first time in Ulverston's football team, Ulverston Rangers, [26] has been in existence since It boasts two good grounds and a full-size grass training pitch. It is the only football team within Ulverston itself. Ulverston A. Players wear a blue with white trim strip with blue shorts and blue socks. It has produced several professional rugby players, including Derek Hadley and Andy Whittle. A parkrun event has been held every Saturday at Ford Park since There is a swimming club at Ulverston Leisure Centre. The triathletes of Ulverston Tri Club are also based there and train there on Saturday mornings. Over the years the town has been the birthplace of several famous people. A monument to him — a replica of the third Eddystone Lighthouse — stands on Hoad Hill overlooking the town. He appeared in The News Quiz , occasionally introduced The Goon Show , and read the spoof "news bulletin" that featured in the middle of the comedy The Men from the Ministry. Despite being entitled The Royal Norwegian Honorary Consulate in Barrow-in-Furness , one of the numerous consulates of Norway is actually located on the outskirts of Ulverston. The town of Ulverstone in Tasmania , Australia is named after Ulverston and similarly built at the mouth of a Leven River. The following people and military units have received the Freedom of the Town of Ulverston. Ok so the good things about this novel I love the sense of the change of time over the centuries in one small village like the changing of the seasons. I also found certain ye olde English extremely trying and just annoying as hell. So by the end I just wanted to finish it not caring if I actually read the last few pages. So ok but not great Although some of the individual passages were well written, I really didn't enjoy this at all. The sections with local dialect were just too challenging to read for very little return to the reader. I like the premise of the book, with the same place featuring through time from 17oo's until the present day, but found it focused more on the people rather than the place and it didn't engage me or give me a sense of the place through time. It's difficult when the sections are so dispara 2. It's difficult when the sections are so disparate and rather obscure. My favourite section was near the end, set at the start of WW1. I thought this was very well written. The very last part is impossible to read on the Kindle version but I tried my best. All in all an unsatisfying read. Jun 11, Beth added it Shelves: couldn-t-finish. This is the first book that I remember not finishing. Honestly, I've not read such self aggrandising, pretentious twattery in my life and I had to do a "literary fiction" module full of angsty white middle aged authors projecting onto their characters at uni. The cover blurb has a Sunday Times reviewer declaring this "A masterpiece" and it It is a powerful exercise in the taking on of different voices, without a doubt-- with each change of era, there is a different narrative point of view, and they are all indeed quite distinct-- but to my slightly low- brow tastes it is wanting in the area of plot. Stuff happens, yes, and there is a nice little quiver in the reader's bosom when events from earlier in the book are referred to later, fr The cover blurb has a Sunday Times reviewer declaring this "A masterpiece" and it Stuff happens, yes, and there is a nice little quiver in the reader's bosom when events from earlier in the book are referred to later, frequently in a distorted form as if authentically passed along by word of mouth, but none of it really has any bearing on what follows. This combined with an occasionally painful patch of phonetic dialogue the end of the s is marked by twenty-eight pages of picturesque rural gibberish with but a single period for punctuation makes it something of an up-hill climb for the reader. It is an impressive exercise, but I'm not sure it's an enriching one. As I say, I'm slightly low-brow in my expectations. One might point out that there is a good depiction of the futility of human ambition, of the ephemerality of human works, and of the paradox of "progress" things get worse because things get better , and that's all true. If that's the sort of thing that you're looking for in a book, and you don't mind the substitution for plot by slices of life, you'll rate this book higher than I. What stars I've given it are mainly for the workmanship; the different voices also give an impression of authenticity to each era, and I do appreciate that. Sadly, despite having looked forward to reading this one I had to give up on it. For those that know me well, they know that I don't give up on books easily and it did take a while to come to this decision. I started the book on the 8th May and by 17th May, I'd only managed to read around a pages. It was as if reading it was a chore and reading should never be a chore in my opinion. When I was in the mood to read or had the time, it wasn't the first book that I picked up and when I did pick i Sadly, despite having looked forward to reading this one I had to give up on it. When I was in the mood to read or had the time, it wasn't the first book that I picked up and when I did pick it up, it was with some reluctance. It's not that it was badly written as it was far from that. I found it well written but it didn't grab me. I'm not a huge fan of short stories and this was basically a series of short stories set over several centuries featuring one fictitious village know as Ulverton, which did have certain variations on the name. If I'd got on with it better this would have been more. View all 4 comments. Jan 31, Leslie rated it it was amazing Shelves: 20th-century- fiction , , short-fiction , favourites. Loved this. It's impressive simply in terms of sheer narrative skill. Each chapter is distinct in form and voice, moving from to , including short story, stream of consciousness, diary entries, epistolary fiction, courtroom depositions, descriptions and annotations for a supposed book of photographs, a transcript for a television documentary. Names and stories weave in and out of individual chapters, with every chapter forcing the reader to rethink earlier stories and implications. And Loved this. And through it all a shifting, wonderfully complex sense of the relationships between place and time, present and history. A masterclass in narrative technique and control of form. Sep 19, Sonja Trbojevic rated it it was amazing. These 12 stories, set in the fictional town of Ulverton, span over 3 centuries of English history, from to An interesting and challenging read, with the final tale taking the reader back to the first one, it is a book to remember. The tales written in dialect reminded me of some of Alan Garner's work. Shelves: s. Ten or so carefully interlocking stories over several centuries of an English village. Difficult going in places, possibly a tiny bit too clever for its own good in others, and one that I think needs at least two reads to fully grasp.