Jonathan Barnes

Stranger in the Night

Melmoth

By

Serpent's Tail 288pp £16.99 order from our bookshop

The Essex Serpent, Sarah Perry’s second novel and the prize-winning, bestselling book that made her name, merely flirted with the motifs and machinery of the gothic. With its perspicacious heroine, a seemingly impossible aquatic creature glimpsed in dark water and rural landscape of the bleakest and most minatory sort, it was content just to hint at the existence of the supernatural before drawing back warily into realism. The follow-up to that immensely successful project, Melmoth chooses not to flinch away in such a fashion but rather rushes, full tilt and without apology, towards the uncanny.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'Since Dylan’s commercial and ideological heyday, the intrusion of sociology, semiology and post-structuralist thou… ,
    • 'One of the reasons for its longevity is that it has virtually nothing to say about science and technology at all,… ,
    • 'The characters in many of these stories are trapped in the obsessive present tense of their own thoughts; in the m… ,
    • 'Libraries, for much of their existence, have embodied in microcosm many of the characteristics of the totalitarian… ,
    • 'Moss and Cynthia buy several properties through which to launder their ill-gotten gains, take lots of drugs, have… ,
    • 'Never mind the imperial cult. This is the cult of Boris. What happened to Rome?' From the LR archive:… ,
    • Thirty-two years ago this month, we published Muriel Spark's short story, 'A Playhouse Called Remarkable' Read it… ,
    Follow Us