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    Burnt Island
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    Burnt Island
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    Burnt Island
    Ebook189 pages1 hour

    Burnt Island

    By Alice Thompson

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    For disillusioned author Max Long, the offer of a writing-fellowship on the mysterious-sounding 'Burnt Island' is a godsend. Max is determined that, inspired by his tenure on this windswept outpost, he will produce every writer's dream - the bestseller. And this time, he plans to subvert his usual genre and write a horror story. But upon arrival, Max's fantasies of hermetic island life are overturned when he encounters a potential rival living in close proximity - the famously reclusive James Fairfax, author of the internationally-lauded novel, Lifeblood.Fairfax's critical and financial success with Lifeblood, coupled with his refusal to court the limelight, has long been the talk of the literary circles. However, as the lives of the two men become intertwined, Max cannot marry the myth of the publicity-shy Fairfax with the apparently urbane and confident reality. He begins to suspect that Fairfax is not the true author of his exceptional debut. Moreover, Max cannot escape the disturbing knowledge that Fairfax's wife has disappeared. Recently-divorced and struggling to keep a grip on his fragile mental state, the vulnerable Max finds himself sliding into Fairfax's world. And he starts to witness alarming visions that take the form of the horror he is attempting to write. Who or what is the sinister, darting figure who appears between the trees of Fairfax's garden at night? Who is the tiny, forlorn little girl who seems to need help? And what has happened to Fairfax's missing wife? With an unnerving plotline in which we encounter doppelgängers, ghostly forms and machines masquerading as humans, Burnt Island is a masterwork of subtle terror. At times evoking The Wicker Man in its growing sense of paranoia and undercurrent of eroticism, Thompson's evocative, compellingly-written story takes a grip on the reader as inexorable as that of Burnt Island on Max Long. An ironic satire on literary ambition, Thompson's sixth novel soon draws the reader into something much darker.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSalt
    Release dateMay 15, 2013
    ISBN9781844719563
    Unavailable
    Burnt Island
    Author

    Alice Thompson

    Alice Thompson was born and brought up in Edinburgh. She was the former keyboard player with post-punk eighties band, The Woodentops and joint winner with Graham Swift of The James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction for her first novel, Justine. Her second novel, Pandora’s Box, was shortlisted for The Stakis Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year. Her other novels are Pharos, The Falconer and most recently Burnt Island. Alice is a past winner of a Creative Scotland Award. She is now lecturer in Creative Writing at Edinburgh University.

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    • 4/5
      This is the story of a struggling writer who goes on an island retreat, to help him break through his writer's block - he is intent on writing something that will be popular, not like his previous books, which were critically acclaimed but didn't sell very well. Or perhaps this is the story that he writes - a gripping thriller full of twists and turns and with, as he notes to himself, a cliffhanger at the end of every chapter.Either way, the island retreat is not everything that Max hoped for. His luggage is washed overboard during his boat ride out to the island, his promised traditional bothy turns out to be a stationary caravan, and his mysterious benefactor is revealed as a more successful writer than he is. Everyone on the island seems to know his business:"You're the writer, aren't you?"It was funny how each person said that in a different way. Dr Macdonald said it as if it were a medical condition. How right she was.However, none of them is exactly what they seem - and some of them drop mysterious warnings about the fate of the last young writer to accept James' generosity.I don't think it was inevitable that I enjoyed this book - sometimes this sort of slightly show-offy cleverness annoys me - but I was in the right mood to enjoy the cleverness both of the overall concept and of the writing.