Small presses being defined as having fewer than five full-time employees. Yesterday the longlist for the Prize was announced. How can a person speak when they lose faith in the authority of their voice? One night on the cusp of winter, a man sits alone, in silence, and begins to lay words on an empty page.
He speaks of ancestry and stymied ambitions, of confusions and doubts, of what he despises and what he adores. He speaks of scripture and commandments, of conformity and evangelism; he speaks of the lust and the shame that have led him away from a doctrinaire upbringing, and of the love that has sheltered him in his spiritual exile.
And yet, in order to speak of these things, he finds he must speak back to things he has already said: so he returns to his earlier words and casts doubt on their veracity, to elucidate the implications that were lost when he wrote them down. There are rumours of dogs gathering in the mountains, preparing for an assault on the city.
The name Dessaintes is one to reckon with. A bombastic, violent and increasingly dangerous clan, little do they know that their downfall is being chronicled by one of their own. The City of Durham, But is this monster only a myth, born from the dim minds of toiling peasants? Or does the Wraith β and do the murders β have roots in real events suffered by those fated to a lifetime of labour?
As Mother Naked weaves the strands of the mystery β of class, religion, art, and ale β it starts to seem as though the chilling truth might be closer to his privileged audience than they could ever imagine. In the Channel Islands of the s, Alderney is not yet the tourist paradise filled with luxury cars it is today. Deidre is a victim, of her family, her society, her history.
