Courting Shadows - Hardcover

Poster, Jem

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1590200322 ISBN 13: 9781590200322

Publisher: The Overlook Press, 2008

Synopsis

Conducting repairs on a church in a remote English village as part of his self-imposed exile, late-nineteenth-century architect John Stannard begins damaging the ancient structure in his insensitive disregard for what he considers to be the sentimental and superstitious attachments of the locals. A first novel. 12,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author:

Jem Poster is director of creative writing at the University of Wales.

From Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. In Poster's dazzling debut, set amid the Victorian gloom of 1881, snobbish John Stannard leads the restoration of a small, architecturally undistinguished church in a remote British village. It's unglamorous work that the young architect thinks beneath him, what with having to disinter corpses, fend off enraged townsfolk and dole out 19th-century workers comp to injured laborers. Further complicating Stannard's effort is the church's curate, Mr. Banks, who seeks to preserve all of what Stannard aims to modernize and improve, no matter how rotten or broken. The debate between the two men escalates when, stripping plaster from a wall, one of Stannard's employees uncovers a Doom Painting—a folk mural blending Christian and pagan influences dating from medieval times. At the same time, the buttoned-up Stannard begins to experience previously unknown passion, falling for the beautiful 19-year-old Ann Rosewell, an emigmatic local woman. The variously grotesque characters are spot-on, as is the static, lugubrious setting. Poster, who has worked as an archeologist, is formidable in his command of Victorian architecture and restoration, and uses his skills to construct an unlikely, subtext-ridden conflict—over the possibility of restoration to some original state of grace—that is wholly involving from start to finish. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: The Overlook Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1590200322
• ISBN 13: 9781590200322
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288