Fiction
FABULOUS
‘Brilliant fantasies that blend the power of the ancient myths with the immediacy of real life.’ John Carey
‘A wonderful book, bringing together superb narrative gifts and a subtle understanding of the way myth works to make stories that are literally essential, in our own time, to an understanding of what it means to be human. The story of Joseph moved me to tears. So exactly judged, so truthful, so deceptively simple.’ John Burnside
‘Lucy Hughes-Hallett is a wonderfully versatile writer and her enthralling modern reworkings of ancient myths shows her at the absolute top of her game. Hughes-Hallett’s new book is playful and moving, sharply observed and hauntingly mysterious. Fabulous indeed’ Fiona McCarthy
‘Fabulous is enchanting. The sort of book you can't stop reading, even though you never want it to end’ Sue Prideaux
‘The writing in Fabulous is fabulous. So is the imagination, the wit and the storytelling. This is a marvellous book, and with each chapter I became more astonished that ANYONE could know so much about the detritus and edges of our modern life’ Carmen Callil
‘There is a lovely, otherworldly feel to the events, persons and small-town and seaside locations. The mythical or scriptural inspirations vanish into the stories.’ James Buchan
Not since Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber have old stories been made to feel so electrically new.
It's in the nature of myth to be infinitely adaptable.
Each of these startlingly original stories is set in modern Britain. Their characters include a people-trafficking gang-master and a prostitute, a migrant worker and a cocksure estate agent, an elderly musician doubly befuddled by dementia and the death of his wife, a pest-controller suspected of paedophilia and a librarian so well-behaved that her parents wonder anxiously whether she’ll ever find love.
They’re ordinary people. All of their stories, though, are inspired by ones drawn from Graeco-Roman myth, from the Bible or from folk-lore.
The ancients invented myths to express what they didn’t understand. These witty fables, elegantly written and full of sharp-eyed observation of modern life, are also visionary explorations of potent mysteries and strange passions, charged with the hallucinatory beauty and horror of their originals.
PECULIAR GROUND
Shortlisted for The Ondaatje Prize Longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize
‘Unlike anything I’ve read. Haunting and huge, and funny and sensuous. It’s wonderful’
Tessa Hadley
'Peculiar Ground is so clever and beautifully written it gripped me from start to end. I abandoned family and work to finish it.' Roddy Doyle
'Lucy Hughes-Hallett's novel is immensely vivid, full of rich and deeply imagined life, and glowing with energy. Her Wychwood estate is utterly real, her characters (both seventeenth- and twentieth-century) entirely convincing, and the story moves with a masterful assurance. There’s a calm virtuosity in the language that I admired a great deal. I just enjoyed it so very much.' Philip Pullman
It is the 17th century and a wall is being built around a great house. Wychwood is an enclosed world, its ornamental lakes and majestic avenues planned by Mr Norris, landscape-maker. A world where everyone has something to hide after decades of civil war, where dissidents shelter in the forest, lovers linger in secret gardens, and migrants, fleeing the plague, are turned away from the gate.
Three centuries later, another wall goes up overnight, dividing Berlin, while at Wychwood, over one hot, languorous weekend, erotic entanglements are shadowed by news of historic change. A little girl, Nell, observes all.
Nell grows up and Wychwood is invaded. There is a pop festival by the lake, a TV crew in the dining room and a Great Storm brewing. As the Berlin wall comes down, a fatwa signals a different ideological faultline and a refugee seeks safety in Wychwood.
From the multi-award-winning author of the The Pike comes a breathtakingly ambitious, beautiful and timely novel about game keepers and witches, agitators and aristocrats, about young love and the pathos of aging, and about how those who wall others out risk finding themselves walled in.