Bewitched by flights of fancy

The Falconer

by Alice Thompson

Two Ravens Press, 144pp, £8.99

IF BOOKS, NOT LIFE, REALLY were like a box of chocolates, then Alice Thompson's latest novel would be the chocolate you'd never tried before. It's some years since she captivated us with Justine, Pandora's Box and Pharos, so naturally expectations are high with this new work.

Thompson is one of those gifted writers whose work is admired but not bought in huge numbers, so the publishers of her previous novels seem to have passed on this one and she has been snapped up by Two Ravens, the small independent publishing company operating by Loch Broom in Ullapool.

Two Ravens have made this something of a speciality, signing prize-winning writers whose low sales figures have caused them to be dropped by their bigger, original publishers.

But there may be another reason why Thompson's previous publishers wouldn't take this novel on. It's a very tricky one to pin down. 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. Most publishers wouldn't even begin to know how to place this, how to market it, and in the current climate, most wouldn't bother to try and find out either.

In this latest novel, the repressed, serious and rather lonely Iris Tennant has arrived at Glen Almain in the Highlands to work for the owner, Lord Melfort. It's the late 1930s, and Melfort is the under-secretary of war, very much committed to appeasing the Germans.

Iris, however, has come in disguise, to a certain extent. Her younger sister, Daphne, worked there before her, but the previous year killed herself. Iris, suspicious about Daphne's death, has come to investigate on her own.

She likes Lord Melfort, finds his wife aristocratic and cold, their daughter, Muriel, a tad wilful, and their sons, Louis and Edward, very strange indeed. Louis, she learns, suffered a breakdown after serving in the trenches during the First World War; Edward is an artist who had fallen deeply in love with Daphne. Meanwhile, the sensuous, sexy Daphne herself seems to have had all the men on the estate under her spell – even the mysterious falconer had fallen for her.

Thompson's story explores the sexual awakening of a repressed young woman as Iris gradually assumes some of Daphne's identity, and falls in love with Edward herself. But the novel also asks questions about Scotland before the war, and about those in positions of authority.

There is an island nearby, now a research station, where, it transpires, chemical experiments are taking place, and regular visits by a member of the German government imply that Lord Melfort has done much more than simply "appease" Hitler.

Ultimately though, it's the magical realism of the novel that is the main glue holding these disparate aspects together. Ghosts, strange beasts, witchy women casting spells, and mysterious deaths, all combine to give Glen Almein its other-worldly atmosphere, and set against the treacherous pre-war behaviour of its landowner, realise the contradiction of reason and emotion that the novel constantly toys with.

Thompson likes to use landscape to encapsulate these opposites – chapters regularly begin with a very animist description of the seasons changing. Nothing is simply what it appears to be, and even the most inanimate objects, like statues, seem to be invested with a life of their own.

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.