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The Haunting of L. (Paperback)
Out of Print
Description
From the bestselling author of The Bird Artist, the final book in his Canadian trilogy (with The Bird Artist and The Museum Guard): a novel about spirit photographs, adultery, and murder
It is 1927. Young Peter Duvett has accepted a job as an assistant to the elusive portraitist Vienna Linn, in the remote town of Churchill, Manitoba. Across Canada, Linn has been arranging and photographing gruesome accidents for the private collection, in London, of a
Mr. Radin Heur—theirs is a macabre duet of art and violence.
When Peter arrives on the night of his employer’s wedding, his life changes in ways he scarcely could have imagined. Falling under the spell of Vienna’s brilliant and beautiful wife, Kala Murie, the uneasy ménage à trois moves to Peter’s native Halifax, where he reluctantly comes to share Kala’s obsession with spirit photographs as Vienna’s violent art reaches a terrifying climax.
About the Author
Howard Norman is the author of three novels—The Northern Lights, The Bird Artist, and The Museum Guard—and a story collection, The Chauffeur. He has twice been named as a finalist for the National Book Award. He lives with his family in Vermont and Washington D.C.
Praise for The Haunting of L.…
“[An] eerie love story and psychological thriller...Howard Norman’s darkly mesmerizing novel of people pushed to, and even beyond, their limits manages to transform contrivances into urgencies. That might almost be a definition of art.” —The Washington Post
“Mr. Norman uses his melodrama as an extravagantly designed stage set, both to enhance a wryly moving love story and to isolate it....It is dark quicksilver: a suspense not of knowing where we will get to—the end is largely signaled from the start—but how.” —The New York Times
“In its intensity, the haunting atmosphere of this tale is both thrilling and horrifying. Above all, it is unforgettable.” —The Baltimore Sun
“The final book in Norman’s Canadian trilogy, this beautifully crafted novel—set in Manitoba and Halifax—becomes a chilling fable about moral blindness, spirit photography, adultery, artistic ambition, and greed.” —Ploughshares
“Impossible to put down....It’s a quirky yarn full of spiritualists and beat cops, red herrings and smoking guns....Like his l994 novel The Bird Artist this new story suggests that love is a leap of faith, one taken—most often—in a blinding snowstorm.” —Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
