The Visitors
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
With the smart suspense of Emma Donoghue’s Room and the atmospheric claustrophobia of Grey Gardens, this “bizarrely unsettling, yet compulsively readable” (Iain Reid, internationally bestselling author of I’m Thinking of Ending Things) thriller explores the twisted realities that can lurk beneath even the most serene of surfaces.
What becomes of a child who grows up without love?
Marion Zetland lives with her domineering older brother John in a crumbling mansion on the edge of a northern seaside resort. A timid spinster in her fifties who still sleeps with teddy bears, Marion does her best to live by John’s rules, even if it means turning a blind eye to the noises she hears coming from behind the cellar door...and to the women’s laundry in the hamper that isn’t hers. For years, she’s buried the signs of John’s devastating secret into the deep recesses of her mind—until the day John is crippled by a heart attack, and Marion becomes the only one whose shoulders are fit to bear his secret.
Forced to go down to the cellar and face what her brother has kept hidden, Marion discovers more about herself than she ever thought possible. As the truth is slowly unraveled, we finally begin to understand: maybe John isn’t the only one with a dark side....
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British author Burns's disquieting debut focuses on Marion Zetland, a 54-year-old spinster who has never held a job, had a friend, or known love. She passes time by daydreaming, watching TV, and trying to please her cruel and imperious older brother, John, with whom she shares her dead parents' dilapidated Northport, England, home. John, a disgraced former schoolteacher, spends his days in the house's cellar, where he allegedly builds model airplanes, but that explanation doesn't account for the sobs and screams that occasionally escape the air vents. Marion tries not to dwell on what might actually be happening in the cellar she's powerless to change the situation, so why bother? but then John falls ill, forcing Marion to face some harsh truths. Burns blurs the line between crime fiction and horror in this relentlessly bleak tale of loneliness and neglect. Marion's emotional instability and proclivity for denial cause readers to question her reliability. Deliberate pacing, a claustrophobic setting, and vivid, wildly unsympathetic characters complement the twisted plot and grim conclusion.)
