Courting Shadows
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"A fantastically tightly written, read-every-word novel . . . As a psychological thriller, it's as close to wonderful as anything I've recently read" (The Guardian).
In the winter of 1881, John Stannard, a young architect, is in self-imposed exile in a remote English village, carrying out repairs to the parish church. Arrogant and insensitive to what he considers superstition and sentimental attachment to the past, he soon begins to inflict serious damage on the ancient building as well as on those with whom he comes into contact—most notably the beautiful, ambitious, local girl Ann Rosewell. This is the mesmerizing tale of a man who clings ferociously to his warped notion of civilized behavior, unwilling to admit his need for love. Set in a vividly evoked landscape and taut with foreboding, Jem Poster's striking first novel pits reason against emotion, progress against preservation, and explores our capacity for invention and self-delusion—the stories we tell each other and the stories we tell ourselves.
"[A] dazzling debut . . . Wholly involving from start to finish." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Written in lavishly beautiful prose, this is a consistently tense tale of rationality, self-delusion, and epidemic superstition." —Booklist
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Poster's dazzling debut, set amid the Victorian gloom of 1881, snobbish John Stannard leads the restoration of a small, architecturally undistinguished church in a remote British village. It's unglamorous work that the young architect thinks beneath him, what with having to disinter corpses, fend off enraged townsfolk and dole out 19th-century workers comp to injured laborers. Further complicating Stannard's effort is the church's curate, Mr. Banks, who seeks to preserve all of what Stannard aims to modernize and improve, no matter how rotten or broken. The debate between the two men escalates when, stripping plaster from a wall, one of Stannard's employees uncovers a Doom Painting a folk mural blending Christian and pagan influences dating from medieval times. At the same time, the buttoned-up Stannard begins to experience previously unknown passion, falling for the beautiful 19-year-old Ann Rosewell, an emigmatic local woman. The variously grotesque characters are spot-on, as is the static, lugubrious setting. Poster, who has worked as an archeologist, is formidable in his command of Victorian architecture and restoration, and uses his skills to construct an unlikely, subtext-ridden conflict over the possibility of restoration to some original state of grace that is wholly involving from start to finish.
