Last time Gemma Amor came on the show we had a good ol’ chinwag about our haunted brains. This time around we get to some other ghosts, in her new novel, The Folly.
It’s a sharp slice of coastal Gothic; Cornwall’s answer to The Shining if you will. The story follows Morgan and her aging father to the weird structure of the tital, where they find hauntings of many stripes, some uncannily familiar.
It wouldn’t be a Gemma Amor episode if things didn’t get personal – and we talk about anxieties of identity, father/daughter dynamics and the trauma of the Covid years. But it doesn’t get too real or heavy, cos we the nature of cursed buildings and twists on possession to deal with.
Enjoy our rural Britishness. I think we hide our inner yokel well.
The Folly was published by Polis Books on in December 2023 (US) and January 2024 (UK)
Books mentioned:
- Full Immersion (2022), by Gemma Amor
- Six Rooms (2021), by Gemma Amor
- Rebecca (1938), by Daphne du Maurier
- My Cousin Rachel (1951), by Daphne du Maurier
- “The Birds,” (1952), by Daphne du Maurier
- Annihilation (2014), by Jeff VanderMeer
- The Lamplighters (2021), by Emma Stonex
- The Dark Between the Trees (2022), by Fiona Barnett
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