She paused and looked at me serenely, as if she had just been blessed. She broke into a sudden smile.
‘That’s for you to find out’. She leant over and handed me the blank book.
She then rose, turned her back to me and walked slowly out of the room.
SEVENTY-SIX
The library is from where I am now writing to you, writing out the story of Justine. I have almost reached the ending. The shadows on the shelves around me are only books. When I hold up their pages to the light, the paper of many of them is so thin that the words on the other side shine backwards, through.
Praise for Alice Thompson
“What makes a book happen? Where does literary inspiration come from? These are some of the underlying questions asked by Alice Thompson’s deliciously creepy tale that is almost an homage to surreal horror stories such as Angela Carter’s The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman and John Fowles’s The Magus… Her prose style tackles these questions in spare and simple language, devoid of drama and, it would seem, ambiguity, and in that sense, she avoids echoing the richness of both Angela Carter and John Fowles, even as she appears to be paying her tribute to both of them. It’s a wise decision, as this prose style also matches better the sparse landscape of the island itself. This is a simple yet clever tale, gently satirising literary ambition as it explores the darker sources of inspiration, and told with all the supernatural horror of the best Hammer stories.”
“Thompson’s gripping narrative invites the reader to solve the mystery of Burnt Island and the true purpose of Max Long’s fellowship. A dark, compelling novel with strong themes of paranoia and strange eroticism throughout.”
“Haunting, strange, Kafkaesque, poetic mystery.”
“A gothic music video of a novel that whirls with weirdness… madly energetic… genuinely scary.”
About the Author
ALICE THOMPSON was born and brought up in Edinburgh. She was the former keyboard player with post-punk eighties band, The Woodentops and joint winner with Graham Swift of The James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction for her first novel, Justine. Her second novel, Pandora’s Box, was shortlisted for The Stakis Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year. Her other novels are Pharos, The Falconer and most recently Burnt Island. Alice is a past winner of a Creative Scotland Award. She is now lecturer in Creative Writing at Edinburgh University.
By the same author
Justine (1996)
Pandora’s Box (1998)
Pharos: A Ghost Story (2002)
The Falconer (2008)
The Existential Detective (2010)
Burnt Island (2013)
The Book Collector (2015)