"Christian Cartwright works for the Huxley Institute in the titular library, secretly misusing its memory storage technology to talk with his dead lover Isolde, restoring her to a semblance of digital life. The story moves between Christian's experiences and similar events two centuries earlier in the life of his ancestor, Montagu Cartwright, the architect responsible for the Huxley Mansion and local church, who owned an ancient obsidian mirror, believed to have been the famous scrying glass of John Dee."
"The narrator, Sebastian Grave, seems immortal, writing a memoir in the 21st century about his adventures in the 1700s. Even then he was old, and shared his mind and body with a demon called Sarmodel, whose occult powers helped him to destroy a terrible beast. Twenty years later, the same area is once again ravaged by a bloodthirsty creature: since Sebastian is sent for by the man who had been his boon companion on the first hunt, and his lover, he hopes this means an end to their long estrangement."
"Orphaned baby princess Halla is saved from her stepmother's spite to be cared for by bears, and then adopted by a dragon. She grows up with both bear and dragon, in this original fairytale by a multitalented feminist icon that manages to feel very old but always fresh and new."
Neil Jordan's The Library of Traumatic Memory presents a dual narrative spanning from 2084 to two centuries earlier, following Christian Cartwright's misuse of memory technology to resurrect his deceased lover and paralleling his ancestor Montagu's encounters with a legendary scrying glass. Cameron Sullivan's debut The Red Winter reimagines the historic Beast of Gévaudan through Sebastian Grave, an immortal narrator sharing his body with a demon, recounting hunts across centuries with themes of estrangement and reunion. Naomi Mitchison's Travel Light, originally published in 1952, offers a feminist fairytale where orphaned princess Halla survives her stepmother's cruelty through care by bears and dragons, maintaining timeless appeal despite its vintage origins.
#literary-fiction #fantasy-and-historical-blending #memory-and-technology #supernatural-narratives #feminist-storytelling
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]