'When we read The Romance we are left stunned and confused. Shah's drawings look as though they have been cathartically scratched into the paper and then seeped in purple.' Marilene Oliver, Royal College of Art
'An engaging slice of late night thoughts presented in a neat slim volume. The expressionistic illustrations, alongside the deceptively stream of consciousness prose, capture a contemporary edginess of modern metropolitan living, in a darkly comic but strangely familiar way.' Graeme Milton, Helter Skelter Publishing
'Exquisitely illustrated and produced.' The Bookseller
'It's about detail and time and the thicket of the mind. In places touching but always with tart antidote to sentiment.' Tim Foster, University of East London
'Like Grey Love the text is Beckettesque and the artwork is both elegant and fittingly grotesque in purple.' Christopher Logue, Literary Review
The Romance: An Episode in the Life of a Young Writer (an Abstract Episode) by Jason Shelley, Vishal Shah. Shelley plays a downbeat writer in an obscure existential tale. The writer's despair and desire for romance draw him into an enchanted underworld.
Tlon Books Publishing - We have published Shelley and The Romance following the national success of his first two books, No Looking Back; a book of selected poems and Grey Love; a work of fiction being an urban love story and an allegory to the 9/11 disaster. The writer and artist have had a history of working together and it was fortunate for us, that we were able to pull them in at the same time. In The Romance, we consider the visual artwork to reiterise the physical implications of the text.
The text is a piece of work written at the beginning of this century by Shelley. To maintain a 'rawness' we have taken it as it was first written and have made few changes. In fact it was written in one sitting over a time span of less than twenty four hours. The sketches were produced for the book in 2001 and it was at this time we created a storyboard. We gave the book four years of breathing space before we revisited it in 2005, added ink to the plates, and finally published it.
The 'smoke grey' card inside the front jacket is a reference to Grey Love and Rothko's window.
Limited Edition Prints Available For more information contact the artist.
