The Wicker Man - Softcover

Hardy, Robin; Shaffer, Anthony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 033039018X ISBN 13: 9780330390187

Publisher: Tor, 2000

Synopsis

A novelization of the haunting Anthony Shaffer script, which drew from David Pinner's Ritual, it is the tale of a Highlands policeman on the trail of a missing girl being lured to the remote Scottish island of Summerisle. As May Day approaches, strange, magical, shamanistic and erotic events erupt around him. He is convinced that the girl has been abducted for human sacrifice. Yet he is soon to find that he may be the revellers' quarry...

About this title

Review:

A novelisation of the notoriously censored 1973 film, The Wicker Man is a compulsive study of faith and temptation--a tale that, on its release, must have been entirely without precedent for its stark treatment of taboo subjects such as pagan worship, kidnap and sacrifice. Interestingly, while the film, shunted from its top billing by nervous studio bosses, came across as a simple morality tale, that of good versus evil, the novel revels in a complex ambiguity that questions the very nature of religious faith to the core, and if anything, is even more of an affront to the Christian consensus.

The plot centres on Sergeant Howie's investigation of the disappearance of a child on the remote islands off the north coast of Scotland. On the isolated isle of Summerisle he finds a society that has long turned its back on Christianity, in favour of the worship of a heathen religion devoted to the rites of fertility and the pleasures of the flesh. Howie becomes convinced that Summerisle's May Day harvest festival will culminate in a sacrifice--yet at every turn, he is confronted by temptation and perversion, an invitation that, despite his devout chastity, he struggles to resist. The workings of the alien community of Summerisle are rendered with impressive attention to detail throughout, through Sergeant Howie's naive, Puritan eye--a detail that gets more foreboding, more grisly, as the tale reaches an arcane climax. And while it's wholly predictable, The Wicker Man concludes with a sense of creeping doom, as chilling as it is inevitable. --Louis Pattison

Book Description:

First published in 1978, five years after the release of the classic horror film from which it is adapted, this reissue brings back into print a book much sought-after by horror buffs and cineasts.

About this edition

• Publisher: Tor
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 033039018X
• ISBN 13: 9780330390187
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304