Quartier Perdu Book Reviews

Quartier Perdu by Sean O'Brien Book Summary

NOMINATED for Best Single-Author Collection in the Shirley Jackson Awards 2018.

Sheltering from an air raid in an empty underground station, a young woman encounters a strangely out-of-place vessel passing along the platform...

A librarian cataloguing the manuscripts of a recently deceased horror writer notices one particular box, relating to his most mystical work, has disappeared...

A young academic takes up residency in the former home of an obscure, Dutch poet in order to better understand the strange rumours surrounding his demise...

Sean O’Brien’s stories are all lit with the unmistakable hue of the Victorian gothic: from the rantings of a deranged psychiatric patient, to the apparition of demons swarming into a remote, rural railway station; solemn oaths are broken and need atoning for; minor transgressions are met with outlandish curses. Often we join O’Brien’s protagonists attempting to take time out from their troubles, but removing themselves from their normal lives only lets the supernatural in, and before they know it personal demons find very literal ones to conspire with.

'O'Brien's ever-lurking sense of humour turns satirical in his caricature of an academic, a media and communications lecturer specialising in "post-Buffy theory", who is lured into becoming a human sacrifice in the annual college production. Atmospheric and highly literate, with a sense of writerly power in reserve, these gothic tales from a prizewinning poet strike a relishable balance between playful and macabre.' - The Sunday Times

'Sean O'Brien's new collection of short stories carries an unexpected but welcome hint of the golden age of British horror cinema. [...] Time and again in these slivers of contemporary Gothic, protagonists start from a place of ominous normality and end in some fashion entombed, trapped or driven mad.' - The Times Literary Supplement

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