Looking Glass Sound
from the bestselling and award winning author of The Last House on Needless Street
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- €6.49
Publisher Description
** AN OBSERVER BEST BOOK OF YEAR **
'Ward's most complex and brilliant book yet' - GUARDIAN
'A darkly moving and heartfelt exploration of obsession' - DAILY EXPRESS
Writers are monsters. We eat everything we see...
In a windswept cottage overlooking the sea, Wilder Harlow begins the last book he will ever write. It is the story of his childhood companions and the shadowy figure of the Daggerman, who stalked their New England town. And it is the story of Sky, Wilder's one-time friend, who stole his unfinished memoir to turn it into a lurid bestselling novel, then died without ever explaining why.
This book is Wilder's last chance for revenge. But as he writes, he begins to find notes written in Sky's signature green ink, and events in his manuscript start to chime eerily with the present. Is Sky haunting him? And who is the dark-haired woman drowning in the cove, whom no one else can see? With his grip on reality slipping, Wilder begins to fear that this will not only be his last book, but the last thing he ever does...
'So beautiful, so dark and so vivid' - JENNIFER SAINT
'A beautifully sinister tale of perception and identity' - JOANNE HARRIS
'Enthralling and heartbreaking' - M.R. CAREY
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
What first appears to be nostalgic coming-of-age story, set in the hazy summer decades ago, swiftly takes an alarming swerve into abject darkness and chaos in this compelling fifth novel from Catriona Ward, an acclaimed US-born, London-based literary horror writer. The New England coastal setting, a town with a serial killer on the loose, is so evocatively creepy it may well put you off ever taking a beach holiday again. Meanwhile, there are books within books, multiple, pinballing viewpoints and timeframes, and deeply unreliable narrators. Much of the time you don’t really know what’s going on—but it’s all part of the fun.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ward (The Last House on Needless Street) examines the blurred line between reality and fiction in her unsettling latest. The story opens in 1989: lonely teenager Wilder Harlow is summering with his parents on the coast of Maine, where he meets handsome local Nat Pelletier and wealthy British vacationer Harper. The three quickly bond over local legends of the Dagger Man, a killer who leaves behind Polaroids of his victims. One afternoon, the friends make a grisly discovery that tests their connection and gives Wilder a chronic case of anxiety, which he manages by obsessively writing about the Dagger Man. Decades later, after the friendship has dissolved, Wilder returns to Maine to write a memoir covering the events of that fateful summer. Once there, he's dogged by hallucinations, an unreliable memory, and a sense that he's caught himself in some sort of time loop when events from his book start manifesting in the present. Ward dazzles with her ability to deliver satisfying narrative surprises at nearly every turn, though the novel's metafictional layers can become tedious. Still, patient readers will be rewarded by a worthwhile conclusion—and likely motivated to read it all a second time.
