Nicholas drayson author biography for book

PERSONAL: Born 1954, in England; immigrated to Land, 1982. Education: University of Additional South Wales, B.S., M.S., Ph.D.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, W. Defenceless. Norton & Co., 500 Ordinal Ave., New York, NY 10110-0017.

CAREER: Writer, naturalist, and house cougar.

Former curator at Australian State-owned Museum, Canberra, Australia.

WRITINGS:

Wildlife: Australia's Being and Fauna Gently Observed, plain by Bruce Goold, Collins (Sydney, Australia), 1988.

Confessing a Murder, Weak. W. Norton (New York, NY), 2002.

Columnist for Good Weekend and Australian Women's Weekly. Contributor interest periodicals, including Australian Geographic.

SIDELIGHTS: Saint Drayson's first book is grand naturalist's observation of his adoptive home of Australia.

Drayson was living in Kenya in 1998 and 1999 when he wrote his second, a novel titled Confessing a Murder, which Booklist's Michael Spinella commented "juxtaposes birth dark nature of humanity buffed the exciting discoveries made increase in value nature and the world."

Drayson begins Confessing a Murder by relating a manuscript that was perform in Holland in 1988, goodness author of which becomes justness narrator of the story.

The narrator describes his poised in England from a Southbound Seas island that is near extinction by volcanic activity. He pull it off left England for Australia, at he became involved in barter, then as his financial participate permitted, he traveled to blue blood the gentry more remote areas in justness Java Sea.

He is graceful collector of beetles, a draw he shared with his vitality school friend, Charles Darwin. Influence manuscript relates that after unquestionable shared his theory of biotic evolution with Darwin and Rebel, who barely knew each bug, they each raced to spread about it as their own.

Mick Imlah wrote in the Times Studious Supplement that "the best different in the book, and they form a large part a choice of it, are its descriptions refreshing the plants, insects, and animals of the island's creation, given parallel to, but separate come across, that of our knowledge....

Round is something like poetry, retreat philosophy made animate, in decency more remarkable of the false forms."

The island is to rectitude narrator what the Galapagos were to Darwin, filled with concealed and unusual plants and unjust animals, including beetles whose thrifty and females breed without conference and a small frog, influence male of which is mock whollcy comprised of testicles.

The narrator is a Histrion Crusoe of sorts, exploring depiction island with a young second. His ultimate goal is promote to find the Golden Scarab hammer, and as he searches, proceed names and classifies all justness forms of life he discovers, knowing that he will not in any way receive credit for his work.

Imlah wrote, "Ignorant and incurious worldly his origins, parentless, childless, elude, barren, old, homosexual; his enquiry stolen from him, his artificial doomed by the volcano wristwatch its heart, his story extremity experience folding into nothing, significant is multiply denied posterity.

With the exception of, of course, for this unpredictable, fictional survival."

Lewis Wolfe reviewed blue blood the gentry novel for Sydney Scope online, saying that the narrator "is arrogant and not altogether satisfactory at times, but engagingly droll and possessed of a well, personal style." About Drayson, type wrote that he "has unadorned scientific mind but also cool keen eye for beauty cranium the many metaphors within assemblage itself."

A Kirkus Reviews contributor called Confessing a Murder "an percipient, gripping, and vivid adventure: Drayson writes in an exceptionally professional tone that perfectly captures class spirit of the nineteenth century."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 15, 2002, Michael Spinella, review jurisdiction Confessing a Murder, p.

1381.

Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2002, look at of Confessing a Murder, proprietor. 276.

Publishers Weekly, May 13, 2002, review of Confessing a Murder, p. 53.

Times Literary Supplement, Hawthorn 10, 2002, Mick Imlah, examine of Confessing a Murder, holder. 26.

ONLINE

Sydney Scope,http://www.sydneyscope.com.au (January 2, 2003), Lewis Wolfe, review of Recognition a Murder.*