Sceptre London 1989

stan dobry plus

str. 231

format 13 x 20 cm

waga 230 g

Książka w języku angielskim/The book is in English

Gregory excels at fierce little novels about city men who move to the country, and discover, to their growing horror, how Nature can act as a mirror for a primitive unmanageable maleness they have never confronted before. This powerfully sensual tale is about a solicitor's clerk who tries to exile himself from his inner violence by fleeing to a tiny cottage in the woods of Welsh Snowdonia. He becomes obsessed with the woodwitch (a fungus shaped like a penis), then with various dead and/or disturbing animals that appear to him, and finally, with the depths of his own sexuality.

I picked this book up in a charity shop and knew by the end of the first chapter that I would have to hunt down everything Stephen Gregory has ever written. His prose is as near to perfect as you're going to get. Incredibly vivid imagery and effortlessly atmospheric, Gregory's story of a man obsessed will carry you hurtling to the end. The only book I've ever read that is truly worthy of the cliched 'unputdownable'.
As it turns out, my hunt for his other works didn't take too long. As far as I can establish, he's only written three others - The Cormorant (his first and equally as good) and The Blood of Angels (which only arrived on my doorstep the day I decided to write this review. However, I'm quite sure it's not going to dissapoint).
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