Rustication
One of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of the Year.
“Atmospheric, lurid, and brilliantly executed, Rustication is sure to spin readers into its spider's web of intrigue and violence.” The Independent
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 neighbours, and Richard finds himself the leading suspect in a series of crimes and misdemeanours ranging from vivisection to murder.
“Charles Palliser is one of our finest writers, and a new novel from him is always cause to celebrate. Rustication is a book for lovers of mystery and suspense, for those who enjoy reading between the lines of the text. Palliser turns the reader into a detective as the story unfolds: Who is writing these vicious letters? And what is their purpose? How much can we trust the narrator’s account of events? This is an extremely clever novel in which not only is there a mystery in the invented nineteenth-century world of the story but also a mystery about the nature of the text the reader is reading. Here is a book to satisfy fans of Wilkie Collins and Vladimir Nabokov.” Jane Harris, author of The Observations
“A literary Dr. Frankenstein, [Palliser] has stitched together parts of Jane Austen and Edgar Allan Poe. The result is deliciously wicked.” Washington Post
“Palliser adds the modern pleasure of ambiguity to this rich and authentic confection of Gothic suspense.” The Independent
“[Palliser’s] narrator, Richard Shenstone, is so marvelously and credibly naïve that I couldn’t stop turning the pages, hoping he would recognize before it was too late that what he doesn’t know could well be the death of him.” Valerie Martin, author of Property, winner of the 2003 Orange Prize
“Though its graphic passages may be disconcerting to some readers, the novel wraps a genuinely memorable reflection on family and human fallibility in a wickedly entertaining, intricately plotted read.” - Publishers Weekly (starred review)