A whimsical blend of memoir and travelogue, laced with wry writing advice, Bleaker House is a story of creative struggle that brilliantly captures the self-torture of the writing life.

Twenty-seven-year-old Nell Stevens was determined to write a novel, but life kept getting in the way. Then came a game-changing opportunity: she won a fellowship that would let her spend three months, all expenses paid, anywhere in the world to research and write a book. Would she choose a glittering metropolis, a romantic village, an exotic paradise? Not exactly. Nell chose Bleaker Island, a snowy, windswept pile of rock in the Falklands. There, in a guesthouse where she would be the only guest, she could finally rid herself of distractions and write. In three months, surely she'd have a novel.

And sure enough, other than sheep, penguins, paranoia, and the weather, there aren't many distractions on Bleaker. Nell gets to work on a delightful Dickensian fiction she calls Bleaker House - only to discover that total isolation and 1,100 calories a day are far from ideal conditions for literary production. With deft humor, the memoir traces Nell's island days and slowly reveals details of the life and people she has left behind in pursuit of her writing. They pop up in her novel, too, and in other fictional pieces that dot the book. It seems that there is nowhere Nell can run - an island or the pages of her notebook - to escape the big questions of love, art, and ambition.

As Nell races to finish her book, Bleaker House marks the arrival of a remarkable literary talent.