Description

Deeply unnerving and utterly original – the book you will need to talk about.

A writer decides to write her next book about a female author and artist unjustly forgotten by history. But what starts as an exciting research project rapidly unravels towards breakdown and horror.

The subject is to be Helen Ralston, an early twentieth-century author who has been systematically written out of history. The narrator sets about investigating her story as an artist, writer and muse to a much more famous man. Amazingly Ralston turns out to be still alive, and although elderly and frail a series of interviews begin. But a tale about the historic erasure of female voices starts to break down into something even more sinister, bizarre and all-consuming as the narrator uncovers unnerving parallels between Ralston’s story and her own…

‘An astonishing and deeply strange novella… Inspired, delicate and quite sinister’ Mariana Enriquez

‘Short, uncanny provocative’ Lauren Elkin, New York Times

‘Exhilarating! What an absolutely beguiling book with an ending that left me breathless and giddy’ Rachel Yoder, author of Nightbitch

Publisher Review

My Death meditates wonderfully on writing, on gender, and on the historical erasure of women artists. It is also deeply strange. The strangeness increases almost imperceptibly until the reader – along with the nameless narrator – finds herself trapped in a frighteningly impossible world — Sarah LeFanu