This is the 3rd Max Porter book I have read. I am becoming addicted. He is the most exciting novelist I have read in recent times. I adore his writing and this one is the best so far, a gripping read. I love the way he uses words - 'Palette-knife smears of bad weather rush past the windows'; ' There is a moment like a cello note, then. Warm and wooden and full of other things. Nobody speaks but we are all listening' 'I'm more accustomed to the sound of the village now. I know a hedgehog making its way along the planted borders, I know the postman's early footsteps on the gravel. I know the alien hum of Mrs Larton's late-night tumble-drying.This isn't that. This is a human body moving. There is someone in my house.' The way the eavesdropped conversations of villagers, the sound bite of gossip and mundane minutiae of life are 'heard' on the wind, on the page they move like fluttering words - they are brought to life by excellent multi-voice narration. It really pays the hear Porter's novels read aloud, like listening to a Guillermo del Toro producing Pan's Labyrinth. This book will take you from realism, into the magical unreal, from folk tale into drama and twisting it walks backwards through them all.
Max Porter has a new book due out in Feb 2027 entitled Burn and Rave, I , for one, will be eagerly waiting for it.
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