Love and survival in the surf
FROM THE WRECK by Jane Rawson (Picador £14.99, 272 pp) THIS strange story of love and loneliness, which explores how we all long to belong, is simply wonderful.
It opens in 1859 with a shipwreck on Carpenters Reef on Australia’s south coast, as cabin steward George Hills attempts to stay alive while his crew members die.
Eventually rescued, he cannot forget the brutal necessities of survival nutrition, or the mysterious Bridget who kept him company, then disappeared.
Bridget is equally adrift — ‘she’ is a shape-shifting alien who, while searching for her own kin, is hoping for a sense of connection with other creatures.
It sounds outlandish, but Jane Rawson’s writing is uncannily good — an original blend of speculative fiction, chilling horror and emotional empathy, fluidly carrying the reader along on a remarkable journey. WAKENHYRST by Michelle Paver (H of Z £14.99, 304 pp)
MICHELLE PAVER’S latest superb, supernatural novel is set in Edwardian England on the edge of the Suffolk Fens, where the uneasy wildness of the landscape is a perfect backdrop to a gothic tale of superstition and suppression.
Maud Stearne is the daughter of patriarchal Edmund, a rich scholar and historian.
Smart, headstrong and lonely — she’s grieving her beloved mother who’s died following a relentless series of miscarriages and stillbirths — the forbidden Fens offer Maud freedom and beauty in a life ever more narrowed by the demands of her father.
When Edmund discovers a ‘doom’ in the local churchyard, the medieval painting of a devil upends his mental stability: increasingly haunted by the idea that evil is abroad, his behaviour becomes erratic. Paver deliciously ratchets up the tension as Maud struggles for autonomy in the face of her father’s deranged obsessions.
THE GHOSTING OF ANNE ARMSTRONG by Michael Cawood Green (Goldsmiths £20, 360 pp)
THIS book is part of Goldsmiths Press’s Practice As Research series, which, in this case, uses a novel to ask questions about the ways in which historical sources are used to give voice to figures who are long gone, but whose presence haunts the archive.
The ghost in this fusty and frustrating novel is illiterate 14-year-old Anne Armstrong, who made dramatic accusations of witchcraft against her country neighbours in a series of court appearances in 1673.
Her claims that they took the shapes of bees, hares and cats and summoned magical food were recorded by court clerks and magistrates.
In the present, an obsessive researcher pores over the documentation, while also trying to conjure up the teenager’s thoughts and feelings, even as Anne’s silent apparition emerges as a surprisingly vivid character in the otherwise lacklustre world of the novel.