Tillinghast

There's a name for what he is. He prefers not to use it…

Stutley Tillinghast lives a solitary life, ostensibly as the minister of a remote rural parish in Rhode Island. For many decades now, what little human contact he allows himself has been brief, frenzied and bloody, and always ends in a shallow grave in his cellar.

You and I would have a name for what he is, but he prefers not to use it – he has needs, and when they become unbearable, he fulfils them.

Then the girl arrives – 19 years old, she has travelled from the UK to find him. She seems to have his surname, and her resemblance to him is uncanny. She is sick – very sick – and Tillinghast recognises her symptoms all too well. Which means he also knows what she needs…

Darkly compelling and irresistibly readable, TILLINGHAST marks the arrival of a major new literary talent.

Reviews

'Deliciously unsettling. Clare Cavenagh weaves a gothic magic through the pages, evoking Shirley Jacksonesque horror. Tillinghast examines the fine line between what is human and what is not and elicits a dread that leaves you unable to look away. A book that will stay with you long after you’ve finished turning the pages.' AHANA VIRDI, author of Sour Fruit

About the author

Clare Cavenagh spent her childhood in Australia, and her adolescence in Switzerland. She read English and Renaissance Literature at the University of Cambridge, and now lives in London where she works as a copywriter. Her short fiction and criticism have been published in Editions L'Hèbe, Cambridge Quarterly and Eucalyptus Lit. TILLINGHAST is her first novel.