The Falconer

It is 1936. Iris Tennant applies to become personal assistant to Lord Melfort, the Under-Secretary of War, at his private estate in the Scottish Highlands. Her secret plan is to find out why her younger sister Daphne committed suicide there a year previously. As Iris gradually falls under the spell of Glen Almain, she starts to see the apparition of Daphne haunting its glades and begins to wonder about the manner of her death. Is there really a beast that inhabits the woods? Who is the mysterious falconer? What actually happened to Daphne, and is Iris destined for the same fate?

A backdrop of impending war and the spectre of Nazi Germany loom over this strange, dark tale. What ensues is a battle between instinct and reason, fantasy and history. Award-winning writer Alice Thompson's compelling new novel is a story of transformation; an exploration of the shifting borderlands between imagination and reality.

Praise for The Falconer:

'There's folk and fairy tale in this, some whimsy, some Angela Carter-style sensuality, combined with an earthy realism, and a thriller-style plot... Thompson's writing is, as ever, the kind that demands full attention – important details are embedded in lyrical description or insinuated into an apparently innocuous observation. This is not a book that is kind to readers – you have to buy into the world its author has created, accept its own very special laws – and that requires effort. But it's effort that is ultimately rewarded: I doubt you'll read another book quite like it this year.' The Scotsman

'...The world she creates is claustrophobic and hypnotic, recognisably a dream but also rational on its own, admittedly skewed, terms... Many novelists bore readers to sleep. Wake up to The Falconer.' The Sunday Herald

Rosemary Goring in The Herald (August 11, 2008) on Alice Thompson's Edinburgh International Book Festival event with John Burnside:
'Each sends a shiver down the spine, Thompson with her elegant prose and eerie imagination ... Thompson uses the supernatural as a way of looking at evil — "a lot of what goes on in the worl is unreal, or surreal, so depicting it in a surreal way makes sense" ... Thompson and Burnside both write like angels.'

For a review on the Vulpes Libris blog, please click here: http://vulpeslibris.wordpress.com/2008/06/08/alice-thompson-the-falconer/

For a review on the Lizzy Siddal blog, please click here: http://lizzysiddal.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/the-falconer-alice-thompson/

Praise for Alice Thompson's previous novels:

‘Cunning, clever, unbelievably casually complex – this is it: the intellectual future of British writing.’
Ali Smith, The Scotsman.

‘Elegantly spare ... radically different in plot, style and language ... Thompson is one of the more original and idiosyncratic new voices in fiction.’ Patricia Nicol, Sunday Times.

‘Thompson writes with a detached clarity that is liquid and sensual.’
Rosemary Goring, Scotland on Sunday.

‘Ingenious ... Pharos rejects the classic ghost story for an impressively disorientating opening out of its generic rules.’ Times Literary Supplement

‘Our reading is deliberately made uneasy and uncertain ... but the elegance and accuracy with which Thompson uses language is formidable.’ THE INDEPENDENT

‘Light and dark, life and death, good and evil: these are the themes of Pharos, a strange, highly original tale full of evocative images.’ SUNDAY HERALD

About Alice Thompson

The Falconer is critically-acclaimed author Alice Thompson’s fourth novel. The former keyboard player with post-punk eighties band, the Woodentops, was joint winner with Graham Swift of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction for her first novel, Justine. Her second novel, Pandora’s Box, was shortlisted for The Stakis Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year. Alice is also a past winner of a Creative Scotland Award. She lives in Edinburgh.

An Interview with Alice Thompson

When did you first begin writing, and what inspired you to do so? Have any specific books/authors served as inspiration for you?

I started writing stories from an early age, six or seven and I think it was really about escaping from the confines of my room. I was a severe asthmatic as a child and spent a lot of time in bed. Writing was something I could do. But I would say my love of reading inspired my writing: fairy tales especially.

Can you tell us something about the inspiration behind The Falconer? And about what you were trying to achieve, what ideas you were trying to convey?

The Falconer started with my love of the landscape of Scotland. But also became an exploration of why we go to war; when a war might be justified and when it might not. I also wanted to pay homage to the wonderful romantic mystery stories of the 1930s and 40s such as those of Daphne du Maurier. Like my previous novels, The Falconer is imagistic; using symbols and dreams as a way of imparting story and atmosphere. Falconry is used as a metaphor for fascism. I was also struck by how the Nazis used nature in its most sinister form - paganism formed a part of their militiaristic ideology. The beast that lives in the glen is a symbol of our darker side. Petrification in the novel - things and people turning to stone - seemed an interesting representation of emotional repression. The glen is a place of metamorphosis which finally works its magic on Iris, the repressed heroine.

How do you go about creating your voice on the page?

I don't so much create my voice as pare it down to the bone, draft after draft until I get the novel my unconscious wanted me to write from the start.

How and when do you write?

It depends on the stage of the novel. First drafts are written anywhere, anytime, in cafes, on the bus, in fields. I like to write, say, eight or nine handwritten pages a day. Later drafts, involving my Apple Mac (with which I have a love/hate relationship) are more organized, taking place on the living room table. I don't judge the first draft at all, just cover the blank pages. Self-criticism only comes later. For it can be brutal.

What do you enjoy reading? What are you reading that you can recommend at the moment?

My real loves are the greats: Shakespeare, the Brontes, Henry James, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Scott Fitzgerald, William Golding and Iris Murdoch. All symbolists, actually, in their own way. I'm also a huge fan of Agatha Christie. She stymies me every time.

An extract from The Falconer

On returning to the library that afternoon, Iris passed a type of file she hadn’t seen before, lying on Lord Melfort’s desk. The document was marked in red ink, MOST SECRET: Biological Warfare Tests: Recent Results from Gruinard Island. She opened it up, her eyes darting quickly over the words: Bacillus Anthracis. She heard footsteps outside, and quickly returned to her desk before Lord Melfort came in.

At night, Iris heard the howling call out to her again, as if drawing her outside. She went downstairs into the garden. Peering into the darkness, she saw something move about between the hedges. She let out a cry, but it was only Coll who suddenly appeared in front of her.

‘You gave me a fright!’ The boy’s eyes looked so large and pale in the moonlight. His dog was barking frantically at his side.

‘She’s been like this for hours. She’s gone quite mad,’ Coll said. For a moment, he looked like a child lost in the forest of his thoughts, tripping up on roots of unpalatable events. He bent down and stroked the dog’s back, but Cassie refused to be calmed. The boy was perturbed. They shared a certain state of mind, and if one was disturbed, so was the other.

‘Go home,’ Iris told the boy gently, and Coll led Cassie, still barking, back towards the avenue, only stopping for a moment to pick up a wounded blackbird that lay on the ground. Iris was left alone in the garden.

Something was moving in the shadows far off, where the garden met the wildness. At first it looked human, but then she realized it must be a huge animal of some kind, hunched and obscure. It merged with the shadows and disappeared into the recesses of the trees, as if not made of flesh and bone but of atoms of darkness formed from the blackness of night.

Stars scattered over the sky like frozen points of ice. The new moon was sharp and pointed at the tips of its scimitar curve. It was such a still night – as if the world had been fashioned from glass. The night air was cold enough to catch her breath. Iris touched her face. She too felt as if she were made of glass, and that if she were to turn and take the first step back to the castle, she might shatter into pieces. So she stood still in the moonlight, waiting, waiting to see a glimpse of what she had seen again but there was nothing, only the glimmer of leaves.

That night, Iris dreamt Daphne was crossing the field of the small island of Gruinard, which lay edged with rocks in the middle of a stormy sea. The field was littered with huddled bodies. At first Iris thought they were sheep, but as she looked more closely at the hunched shapes scattered over the fields, she saw that they were not animals at all, but dead soldiers.