If you thought The Last House on Needless Street was tricksy, just wait until you hear about Looking Glass Sound. This is Cat’s ode to the Maine of Stephen King, the enigmatic narrators of Shirley Jackson and… well, a host of other comparisons that I foist upon her in the next hour.
Above all that though – the book is so typically, inimitably Catriona Ward. It’s a destined Gothic classic that takes the genre, crumples it into a ball before rewriting the whole thing.
We cover the purpose of metafiction in horror, how writing a book is like falling in love, the eeriness of the Maine coast and her fascination with the Neverland Ranch. If that isn’t enough Cat also tells us a ghost story that happened to her just the night before.
Tricksy, very tricksy…as Gollum would say.
Looking Glass Sound was published April 20th by Viper Books in the UK and 22nd August by Tor Nightfire in the US.
Books mentioned:
Lunar Park (2005), by Bret Easton Ellis
The Rules of Attraction (1987), by Bret Easton Ellis
The Secret History (1992), by Donna Tartt
My Other Life (1996) by Paul Theroux
Any Human Heart (2002), by William Boyd
The Haunting of Hill House (1959), by Shirley Jackson
Death of a Bookseller (2023), by Alice Slater
Mrs March (2021), by Virgina Feito
