PublishedScribe Publications, March 2022 |
ISBN9781922585301 |
FormatSoftcover, 416 pages |
Dimensions20.9cm × 13.6cm × 3cm |
From New York Times bestselling author and Mountain Goats singer/songwriter John Darnielle comes an epic, gripping novel about murder, truth, and the dangers of storytelling.
Gage Chandler is descended from kings. That's what his mother always told him. Years later, he is a true crime writer, with one grisly success - and a movie adaptation - to his name, along with a series of subsequent less notable efforts. But now he is being offered the chance for his big break- to move into the house where a pair of briefly notorious murders occurred, apparently the work of disaffected teens during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. Chandler finds himself in Milpitas, California, a small town whose name rings a bell - his closest childhood friend lived there, once upon a time. He begins his research with diligence and enthusiasm, but soon the story leads him into a puzzle he never expected - back into his own work and what it means, back to the very core of what he does and who he is.
Devil House is John Darnielle's most ambitious work yet, a book that blurs the line between fact and fiction, that combines daring formal experimentation with a spellbinding tale of crime, writing, memory, and artistic obsession.
'Quietly, as if stealing in on cat's paws, John Darnielle has become, as a novelist, unignorable ... His third novel, Devil House, is terrific- confident, creepy, a powerful and soulful page-turner. I had no idea where it was going, in the best possible sense ... It's never quite the book you think it is. It's better.'
-Dwight Garner, The New York Times
' R iveting ... Darnielle flays the conventions of true crime to reveal the macabre and ordinary brutality behind sensationalised stories of violence ... This masterwork of suspense is as careful with its sharp takes as it is with the bread crumbs it slowly drops on the way to its stunning end. It operates perfectly on many levels, resulting in a must-read for true crime addicts and experimental fiction fans alike.'
-Publishers Weekly, starred review
'Like his best songs, John Darnielle's startling and tender new novel radiates out in all directions from the bomb blast of teenagehood. It is a novel about the things we want to believe- about conspiracies and rumours and states of wonder, about monsters of convenience and dreams of escape. It turns to face the horror with disarming kindness, and it implicates us all.'
-Miles Allinson, author of In Moonland
Sarah is the fiction buyer at Boffins and has a penchant for writing that is incisive and challenging, bonus points for complicated characters. Trained as a chef, Sarah enjoys all things food- be it a beautifully laid out cookbook, a crop of broad beans in her garden, or a holiday planned entirely around where to eat. When she’s not barracking for the Dockers or walking her dogs, she enjoys endlessly searching for Perth’s best coffee.
In this genre-bending novel, a true crime author moves into the house where two horrific murders took place in order to write about it. Ambitious, complex and unexpected, Devil House asks big questions about the true crime genre and those who mine stories of tragedy for profit.
What happens to the people left behind, and what if the truth does't make a good story?
