The Haunt - Hardcover

Barker, A.L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1860497225 ISBN 13: 9781860497223

Publisher: Virago, 1999

Synopsis

Set in 'old forest country' on the tip of Cornwall, The Haunt is a seedy, dishevelled and decaying hotel, but like the forest itself, with the germ of the legendary Cornish great forest at its heart, The Haunt is a place that welcomes those with longings, with their own deep-seated, incommunicable fears. There is the elderly couple who have just moved to the country, there to find solace but in fact discovering love of a different kind. The child who is odd and needs a friend. The eccentric painter, the loner whose wife has left him.

With her precise, pithy use of language and clear sense of judgement, A. L.Barker's THE HAUNT is a wholly original novel which picks up a clutch of characters and slowly reveals the very eccentricities that drive them.

'She is a quietly excellent and very English writer, who believes in fatalism as others believe in action. She deserves to be read and read again.' Anita Brookner

About this title

Review:

This short, snappy thriller winds to its climax like a high-hedged country lane which leads suddenly over a steep cliff. Set in Cornwall, its main character is undoubtedly Nature, with its fecund woods, choking weeds, copses full of wild flowers that shelter half-devoured dead birds and beautiful creeks which hide forms ressembling incomplete foetuses. Elissa and Owen Grierson retire to a Cornish bungalow to escape the dirt and noise of SW19 and disguise the unsettling nature of their change in life. Unable to cope with the feral garden and dusty house, they employ Mrs Latimer, who equips them with all the local gossip necessary for full functioning in a small village. Owen is befriended by a young boy who lives next door, hoots like an owl and is neglected by his mother, Angela. This does not deter Owen from expressing dormant lustiness for her. Also lusty is artist Charlie Olssen, whose work is yet to find fiscal appreciation. He heads to Cornwall in his clapped-out car, hoping to sell a nude of his ex-wife Nina to her current husband and rekindle carnality with her. Nina was lured away from Charlie by a house, a Manderlay of a thing set amid a "webby dark of yews", where she now lives. Charlie watched her go, "struck by the thickening and thinning, running out and replenishing of the darkness under the yews. It was surreptitious." When Charlie's car breaks down, he holes up in the Bellechasse Hotel, among a cast of characters worthy of any Cluedo game.

There's a novelist-cum-agony-uncle whose real identity behind "The Listening Ear" will be revealed by an over-zealous investigative journalist called Senga, (Agnes spelt backwards) whose fate is sealed by her sartorial taste for duck print shorts early on. There's the Wallingtons, who are drained of empathy for each other and the Soulsbys who have come to Cornwall to enhance their "rapport with supernature". Then there's Gilbert Eashing, who needs a new nurse and Miss Midred Gascoigne who longs to inspire love.

A.L. Barker is a great wit with a delightful ability to evoke the quaint benevolence of English eccentrics. The plot is carefully wrought and the conclusion mapped discretely throughout. A knowing, wry read.--Cherry Smyth

Review:

With its sly, slow-burning jokes and exquisite dialogue, THE HAUNT must count among the season's funniest novels (INDEPENDENT)

She is perceptive and compassionate in her treatment of human folly, with an enviable command of contemporary fiction (LITERARY REVIEW)

Her writing is almost dauntingly fresh - glancing, mercurial, elusive (Adam Mars-Jones)

She is a quietly excellent and very English writer, who believes in fatalism as others believe in action. She deserves to be read and read again. (Anita Brookner.)

About this edition

• Publisher: Virago
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1860497225
• ISBN 13: 9781860497223
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192