Set in 'old forest country' on the tip of Cornwall, The BelleChasse 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
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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
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