Rustication: A Novel - Hardcover

Palliser, Charles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393088723 ISBN 13: 9780393088724

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013

Synopsis

One of the Best Books of the Year by Publishers Weekly

“Endlessly fascinating...one of the strongest novels of the year. ” - School Library Journal
“Readers will have as much grisly fun just sorting out the facts as they will solving the mysteries.” -The Daily Beast
A vertiginous gothic masterpiece from the best-selling author of The Quincunx.

Charles Palliser’s work has been hailed as “so compulsively absorbing that reality disappears” (New York Times). Since his extraordinary debut, The Quincunx, his works have sold over one million copies worldwide. With his new novel, Rustication, he returns to the town of Thurchester, which he evoked so hauntingly in The Unburied.

It is winter 1863, and Richard Shenstone, aged seventeen, has been sent down―“rusticated”―from Cambridge under a cloud of suspicion. Addicted to opium and tormented by sexual desire, he finds temporary refuge in a dilapidated old mansion on the southern English coast inhabited by his newly impoverished mother and his sister, Effie. Soon, graphic and threatening letters begin to circulate among his neighbors, and Richard finds himself the leading suspect in a series of crimes and misdemeanors ranging from vivisection to murder.

Atmospheric, lurid, and brilliantly executed, Rustication confirms Palliser’s reputation as “our leading contemporary Victorian novelist” (Guardian).

About this title

Review

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, November 2013: "Rusticated" was the polite 1800s term used when young men were suspended from school, and that's what’s happened to 17-year-old, opium-addicted Richard Shenstone at the start of Charles Pallister's creepy and addictive fourth novel. Shenstone is "sent down" from Cambridge and forced to return to his rural, rainy home, where he finds his family on the verge of losing their run-down mansion. His father has recently died, and his mother and sister are acting jumpy, sneaky, and strange. Told in the form of Richard's journal--"discovered" by the author 150 years later, in a county records office--we view the story, of desperate families acting desperately, through Richard's opium-fogged eyes. Pallister is an evocative writer, moody and lovely and atmospheric. At times, reading about life on the moors, I felt I should’ve been wrapped in an afghan blanket in front of a fire. As Richard once puts it, being stuck inside during the rain "felt frowsy, cabined, cribbed, and confined." Though the characters aren’t very likable, many of them self-absorbed and deceitful, the story is very catchy, a smart and spooky page turner. It's like reading a BBC Masterpiece Theater mystery, with a heavy dose of Downton (more like downtrodden) Abbey, with saucy maids and prude dowagers, earls and lords and priests. The dark, terrible truths slither out slowly, at times too slowly. “None of us can face the truth,” Richard says. Still, I’m always impressed by a writer who can keep me guessing for 300 pages and pull off one more twist on the last page. --Neal Thompson

About the Author

Charle Palliser was born in Massachusetts, but has lived in the UK since the age of three. A graduate of Oxford University, he writes full time in London.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0393088723
• ISBN 13: 9780393088724
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336