After Me Comes the Flood: From the author of The Essex Serpent - Softcover

Perry, Sarah

2.78

4,087 ratings by Goodreads

9781781253649: After Me Comes the Flood: From the author of The Essex Serpent

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1781253641 ISBN 13: 9781781253649

Publisher: Serpent's Tail, 2015

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From the #1 bestselling, prize-winning author of The Essex Serpent

Longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and Winner of the East Anglian Book of the Year Award 2014

One hot summer's day, John Cole decides to leave his life behind.

He shuts up the bookshop no one ever comes to and drives out of London. When his car breaks down and he becomes lost on an isolated road, he goes looking for help, and stumbles into the grounds of a grand but dilapidated house.

Its residents welcome him with open arms - but there's more to this strange community than meets the eye. They all know him by name, they've prepared a room for him, and claim to have been waiting for him all along.

As nights and days pass John finds himself drawn into a baffling menagerie. There is Hester, their matriarchal, controlling host; Alex and Claire, siblings full of child-like wonder and delusions; the mercurial Eve; Elijah - a faithless former preacher haunted by the Bible; and chain-smoking Walker, wreathed in smoke and hostility. Who are these people? And what do they intend for John?

Elegant, gently sinister and psychologically complex, After Me Comes The Flood is the haunting, hypnotic debut novel by the author of The Essex Serpent.

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Review:

What makes this novel truly remarkable is its unique vision, its skilful and sophisticated characterisations, and the creation, without unseemly effects, of an atmosphere that will haunt the reader long after the final page (John Burnside, Guardian)

Just occasionally you pick up a novel that is inexplicably gripping from the first page - and Perry's debut is one of them (Phil Barker Sunday Times)

An original and haunting book ... a mix of elegant, alluring, but subtly sinister characters ... a talented writer (Daily Mail)

A dark, marvellous novel ... Perry evokes the oppressive atmosphere in precise, elegant prose ... This mesmeric quality recalls Sebald's writing, but Gothic-smudged ... It is not good for a first novel, just very good full stop. So pour yourself a cool drink and bask in a dazzling new writing talent. (Catherine Blyth Sunday Telegraph 2014-07-13)

After Me Comes the Flood is written in deceptively straightforward prose that gradually yields a profound sense of foreboding. A house and the mysteries it contains; a disconcerting, dark reservoir to which everyone's attention returns; and a most unsettling sense of place - all made me think of Fowles' The Magus, Maxwell's The Chateau, and Woolf's To The Lighthouse. This is a book perhaps most deeply about the unknowability of others and of oneself - and one that, while highly disorienting and eerie, is also intensely warm. I loved it. (Katherine Angel, author of UNMASTERED)

Perry's debut successfully creates an air of real eeriness and tension ... the real pleasure here is in her insightful and convincing depiction of family. (Lesley McDowell Glasgow Herald 2014-07-13)

Impossible to put down (Image Magazine 2014-07-01)

'A beautiful, dream-like narrative. Rarely do debut novels come as assured and impressive as this one. (Sarah Waters)

Perry is a startlingly good writer. If she doesn't win the Booker prize one day, I'll be amazed. (Sophie Hannah)

Unsettling, thoughtful, eerie...strange and new...It's very clever and very intriguing. (Tim Pears)

Book Description:

What if you walked out of your life only to find another one was already waiting for you?

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