What do you do when Illusion, Tragedy and Comedy all come at once—and stay overnight!
West London, Summer 1995. The British film industry is at its usual last gasp. Jackie Juste’s successful career on stage and screen has hit the skids due to a strange disorder, an ‘anorexia of the eye, following a fracture of the heart’. Jackie, who requires stage make-up even to see a face in the mirror, has taken Vows of Abstinence: ‘I simply would not whore myself any longer around the scene: stage, movies, anything. After nearly twenty years, I felt sullied by the scripts of a century.’
But chance encounters are about to turn life itself bizarrely performative. As the protagonists of Derek Beaven’s edge-of-the-seat novel criss-cross London to escape the mysterious Dr F (an antagonist hellbent it seems on keeping lovers apart) they enact scenes of extravagant desire and terror, of uncanny mimetic compulsion, in a wealth of fascinating sets and locations—not least, after all the narrative ebbs and flows, in the extraordinary estuary-based denouement to this strikingly original work of gothic romance.
About the Author
Derek Beaven lives in Berkshire. He is the author of five previous novels. His first, NEWTON’S NIECE (1994) was shortlisted for the Writers' Guild Best Novel Prize and won a Commonwealth Prize. His second, ACTS OF MUTINY (1998) was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize. His third, IF THE INVADER COMES (2001) was long-listed for the Booker Prize.
Genre: Mystery
West London, Summer 1995. The British film industry is at its usual last gasp. Jackie Juste’s successful career on stage and screen has hit the skids due to a strange disorder, an ‘anorexia of the eye, following a fracture of the heart’. Jackie, who requires stage make-up even to see a face in the mirror, has taken Vows of Abstinence: ‘I simply would not whore myself any longer around the scene: stage, movies, anything. After nearly twenty years, I felt sullied by the scripts of a century.’
But chance encounters are about to turn life itself bizarrely performative. As the protagonists of Derek Beaven’s edge-of-the-seat novel criss-cross London to escape the mysterious Dr F (an antagonist hellbent it seems on keeping lovers apart) they enact scenes of extravagant desire and terror, of uncanny mimetic compulsion, in a wealth of fascinating sets and locations—not least, after all the narrative ebbs and flows, in the extraordinary estuary-based denouement to this strikingly original work of gothic romance.
About the Author
Derek Beaven lives in Berkshire. He is the author of five previous novels. His first, NEWTON’S NIECE (1994) was shortlisted for the Writers' Guild Best Novel Prize and won a Commonwealth Prize. His second, ACTS OF MUTINY (1998) was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize. His third, IF THE INVADER COMES (2001) was long-listed for the Booker Prize.
Genre: Mystery
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