Gate of Air: A Ghost Story - Softcover

James Buchan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1847249876 ISBN 13: 9781847249876

Publisher: Quercus Publishing Plc, 2009

Synopsis

When mysterious loner Jim Smith moves into remote Paradise Farmhouse, he experiences some strange but wonderful midnight visits from an ethereal woman. He soon discovers that this dream-like figure is the incarnation of a 1960s beauty, immortalized in a famous nude portrait that belongs to his neighbour. Intrigued, Jim abandons his customary aloofness to find out more, and accepts a dinner invitation from his landlords - a billionaire-thug and his beautiful but mistreated wife. The dinner party - a chance for a brilliantly satirical sketch of the braying upper class hunting set - is disastrous and, soon after, Jim's pastoral idyll disintegrates. His lambs die. Cows give no milk. Bees swarm. Sensing his ghostly lover has turned malevolent, Jim knows he must placate her before the circle of decay reaches those he loves - even if that means making the ultimate sacrifice. Both unsettling ghost story and intense love story, The Gate of Air is by turns poetic, learned, satirical and allegorical. This is a beautifully crafted novel about love and loneliness, life and death, and the indelible traces we leave behind us when we die.

About this title

Review:

'Nobody - but nobody - tells a love story better.' --Paul Baily, Daily Telegraph

'...beguiling, poetic prose...a moving meditation on what it is to love.' --Daily Mail.

'I don't believe this country has a better writer to offer than James Buchan.' Michael Hofmann, London Review of Books. 'A wayward and extraordinary ghost story which finds room for both a personal appearance by the goddess of love and a discourse on the political economy of the British countryside.' Evening Standard Books of the Year. 'This story marries classic format with modern details... Buchan has a sharp eye for social detail and the influence of money makes this book entertaining on a profane as well as a spiritual level... with vivid descriptions of the English countryside and a ghost with the grace of a young Jean Shrimpton, this is a spook tale with both style and substance.' Catholic Herald. --Reviews.

From the Back Cover:

Jim Smith, ousted by City financiers from his computer software company, retreats to an old farmhouse in the remote West of England. Though he knows nothing of country life, he takes on livestock and crops, a dog, and a labourer of mysterious and independent habits.
One night Jim is visited by convulsive dreams of a beautiful woman, and at dinner with the local magnate, he sees a ghost. His pastoral idyll disintegrates. All the certainties and reassurances of modern life vanish, and Jim must deal alone with elemental and implacable forces as old as his fields and woods.
The Gate of Air is both an exploration of a disturbed modernity and a fireside spine-chiller of Victorian vigour and conviction.

About this edition

• Publisher: Quercus Publishing Plc
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1847249876
• ISBN 13: 9781847249876
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224