Glister (Paperback)

What begins as a spooky tale of serial murder evolves into something much stranger and riskier - an eschatological fable about innocence, evil and personal responsibility.Seven years ago, John Morrison covered up the killing of Mark Wilkinson. The boy had walked into the poisoned woods surrounding Innertown, the English hamlet blasted by the mysterious but baleful chemicals produced by the Consortium, and disappeared. Morrison soon found what had happened to Mark: He'd been ritualistically slain and hung from a tree. Dumbfounded and overwhelmed, Morrison reported the incident to Brian Smith, the city father who'd promoted him from night watchman of the Homeland Peninsula Company to town constable, and then watched Jenner, Smith's fixer, hide the corpse and spread a story of how the boy had run off to join the circus. That story is getting a little thin now that four other boys have vanished in the woods at roughly 18-month intervals, but Morrison feels locked into his lie and helpless to prevent further outrages. So it falls to someone else to take action: the school friends of the missing children. Under the leadership of sadistic Jimmy van Doren, they're ready to rock. Although successive chapters bounce from one character's point of view to another, the leading role falls to Leonard Wilson, the thoughtful boy who's taken up with both Elspeth, Jimmy's forthright ex-girlfriend, and Eddie, a female member of Jimmy's gang. But although Leonard is given more air time than any supporting player, his fears and feelings are much more definite than he is. Burnside (The Devil's Footprints, 2008, etc.) uses plot, character and mystery only as gambits to launch his spiritual exploration of the horrifyingly thin line between childhood innocence and sociopathic amorality, and ultimately between sins of commission like serial murder and sins of omission like serial cowardice.A truly unusual experience awaits readers willing to forgo the obvious pleasures of the genre. (Kirkus Reviews)

The children of Innertown exist in a state of suspended terror. Every year or so, a boy from their school disappears, vanishing into the wasteland of the old chemical plant. Nobody knows where these boys go, or whether they are alive or dead, and without evidence the authorities claim they are simply runaways. The town policeman, Morrison knows otherwise. He was involved in the cover-up of one boy's murder, and he believes all the boys have been killed. Though he is seriously compromised, he would still like to find out the killer's identity. The local children also want to know and, in their fear and frustration, they turn on Rivers, a sad fantasist and suspected paedophile living alone at the edge of the wasteland. Trapped and frightened, one of the boys, Leonard, tries to escape, taking refuge in the poisoned ruins of the old plant; there he finds another boy, who might be the missing Liam and might be a figment of his imagination. With his help, Leonard comes to understand the policeman's involvement, and exacts the necessary revenge - before following Liam into the Glister: possibly a disused chemical weapons facility, possibly a passage to the outer world. A terrifying exploration of loss and the violence that pools under the surface of the everyday, Glister is an exquisitely written, darkly imagined novel by one of our greatest contemporary writers.

General

Imprint:	Vintage
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Release date:	May 2009
First published:	April 2009
Authors:	John Burnside
Dimensions:	198 x 129 x 28mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	254
ISBN-13:	978-0-09-950784-0
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction
LSN:	0-09-950784-6
Barcode:	9780099507840

Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate? Let us know about it.

Does this product have an incorrect or missing image? Send us a new image.

Is this product missing categories? Add more categories.

Review This Product

No reviews yet - be the first to create one!