GRACE
Alex Pheby
To visit Alex Pheby's author page, click here.
Grace tells the story of Peterman, an inmate at Greenwood Walls secure hospital, whose dramatic escape leaves him seriously injured, lost in the snow. Half-delirious, he encounters an old woman and a young girl who live deep in the nearby forest. Peterman stays with them as he convalesces, and an extraordinary relationship develops between the three tragically damaged people, until circumstances propel Peterman and the Girl back to the harsh world of the city. For Peterman, the Girl represents all the love, trust and beauty that has been missing from his life – she represents his second, and last, chance. How could he possibly survive her loss and to what lengths will he go to prevent it? In luminous, lyrical prose, Alex Pheby has created a powerful tale of love, danger and madness, in a world on the fringes of reality. With the urgency of hyper-realism and the rich strangeness of a fairy tale, Grace is an unforgettable work of literary fiction.
About Alex Pheby
Alex Pheby is a graduate of the Goldsmiths Creative Writing MA and is currently completing a PhD at the School of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. He lives in Norwich with his wife, son and baby daughter. Grace is his first novel.
Praise for Grace
'A world evocative of Grimm and Kafka, and furnished by Freud... Risky first novels are gutsy and Pheby's style conjures Penelope Fitzgerald, Angela Carter and A.S. Byatt... This is an accomplished fable of how we are all constantly struggling to escape our histories and reach a state of grace.' Scottish Review of Books
'A lyrical tale that suggests Pheby is an author to keep an eye on.'
Scott Pack, The Friday Project
'There is a compelling surface story but there are counter stories running beneath, which makes Grace a novel that plays with the mind even after finishing it... The descriptive passages are beautiful, characterisation is gloriously strange and whilst the plot is relatively small in its scale, it is not simple. When viewed as a whole the novel has a mesmorizing, unsettling quality that might be considered quite rare in this age of supposed "lowest common denominator" publishing.' Lisa Glass, Vulpes Libris.
For the complete review, click here.
'Vividly realistic and increasingly surreal ... a poignant study of loss and the ensuing madness of grief.' Marcia Jarnell, Lizzy's Literary Life. To read the full review, see http://lizzysiddal.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/grace-alex-pheby/
See also a review on 'A Common Reader': http://www.acommonreader.org.uk/2009/03/gracephelby.html
An extract from Grace
And then there she was. The girl. Not a child, but not a woman. She wore blue – a doll’s dress, with lace at the collar and cuff. Her hair was pulled tight into a long black ponytail and her skin was beautiful – as white and smooth as the underside of a rattlesnake. In her right hand she was swinging a hatchet and in her left she toyed with a red silk ribbon that she laced deftly between her fingers, in and out, in and out. She stood with her back against a tree trunk and she met Peterman’s pleading gaze without a hint of disquiet, unfazed by the ever-spreading corona of blood that surrounded him.
There was no hint of recognition: from her, of him. Nothing to suggest she had any idea who he was, or what he had done. She did not leap back and point, turning to a non-existent companion for conformation. And neither did she pull a face that said ‘You must be…’
She just stared at him.
‘Can you help me?’ he asked at last.
The girl smiled.
‘Say please,’ she said.
The girl looked away, into the trees, off to some imaginary space where her interest was seemingly held tight. The perfect landscape of her profile was motionless against a patch of swirling pearl sky.
‘I don’t understand,’ Peterman said.
Was this going to be a game? Was she playing a game? In spite of everything? The blood and all?
He lay there. The girl never glanced at him, not even slyly from the corner of her eye. He watched her but she was as still as a statue. If there was a game to play, he would have to play it. Or die.
‘Please,’ he said, and even as he let the word pass his lips he knew that she had won. This was not a game he could win. There was no telling what the game was, but it was her game and to play it was to lose. The girl broke her pose and skipped over until she was slightly more than an arms length away from him. Her shoes were scuffed and marked. The buckles were dull brass. From the ground she was a giant, though she was probably less than five feet tall.
‘I have a hatchet. Would you like it?’
She held it out to him, letting it swing between her fingertips.
Peterman thought. The question was clearly loaded. She smiled like an actor – beautifully, but without honesty – there was something behind the smile, a wicked amusement. Not wicked. Childlike. Selfish. Unthinking. She swallowed once and it was an illusion, almost certainly, but it seemed to Peterman that she was sad. In her heart. And that for all her control, she was tired. Careworn. And then the illusion was gone and there was just a spiteful, playful girl.
‘What would I do with a hatchet?’ he asked.
She turned to him and in her expression there was hope. Definitely, this time. He knew enough about hope to be able to recognise it and though it disappeared as suddenly as a pricked balloon, it had been there. There was no doubt in his mind about that. If there was hope then she had something to gain and something to lose. This was some kind of test, then. The girl dangled the hatchet in front of him and behind the curious smile there was fear – again, it was there for almost no time, but it was there.
‘You could use it to get loose, of course. I saw a fox in a trap once and it bit its leg off.’
‘I’m not a fox.’
‘I know! You’re a man and a man is cleverer than a fox. Isn’t he?’
Foxes were notoriously clever. Were men? The answer could only be no. Except…
‘At some things,’ he realised.
‘What about chopping off legs? Are you clever enough to chop off your leg, to get free?’
The mention of legs immediately pushed the pain from his own to the top of his consciousness. He’d had enough.
‘If this is your trap, please, please, get the key and release me.’
‘Or?’
She paced slightly, as if she was excited. Perhaps then, this was the moment, the turning point that would decide if he passed or failed. There was no threat he could offer her – that would be ridiculous – he was bleeding to death in front of her. If she had the desire she could have buried that axe into him; into his spine, or his ribcage, or his skull, for God’s sake, and that would have been the end of it.
‘Or I will die?’ he wondered.
‘Yes,’ she said, and for the first time she smiled honestly. It was not the false smile she had been wearing before, but a real smile. Her eyes softened with it. ‘Yes,’ she said again, ‘without me you will die.’
We are grateful to the Scottish Arts Council for a grant towards the publication of Grace.
