How Pale the Winter Has Made Us
Adam Scovell
‘A hypnotic tale of solitude and grief.’
– Guardian
‘This is the sort of novel that has W.G. Sebald’s voice close to its ear, yet is a unique, new English voice of its own. It's what I want to be reading right now.’
– Deborah Levy
‘One of the most interesting and original young British writers about landscape, culture and people that I know; consistently adventurous in his explorations of place as a novelist, essayist, critic and film-maker.’
– Robert Macfarlane
‘Adam Scovell is an archaeologist of the imagination, forever unearthing stories like treasure from the soil, raising ghosts, finding links and shining a flickering light into England’s hidden corners.’
– Benjamin Myers
‘Restrained, precise, perceptive writing. Fine British weird.’– Adam Nevill, on Mothlight
How Pale the Winter Has Made Us by Adam Scovell
Isabelle is alone in Strasbourg. The day after her partner leaves to travel abroad, she receives news of her father’s suicide, his body found hanging in a park back home in Crystal Palace. Isabelle misses her flight back to London and a new university job, opting to stay in her partner’s empty flat over the winter.
Obsessed with the many strange coincidences in Strasbourg’s turbulent history, Isabelle seeks to slowly dissolve into the past, succumbing to visions and dreams as she develops her meticulous research about the city. Stalked by the unnerving spirit of the Erl-King she fears something else has died along with her father; the spectres of Europe communicating a hidden truth beneath the melancholia.
How Pale the Winter Has Made Us rummages through the crumbling ruins of a life, building cartographies of place and death under a darkening sky.
Praise for How Pale the Winter Has Made Us
‘Scovell doesn’t aspire to realism: instead he invests his talents in hallucinatory imagery, haunting atmospherics and prose that again blends the stately melancholia of WG Sebald with the logorrhoea of Thomas Bernhard.’
– Guardian
‘A story of grief told through the meticulous mapping of a city… methodical and restrained, yet deeply evocative.’
– Starburst
‘How Pale the Winter Has Made Us is a fine portrait of grief – and the strange roads it can lead us down.’
– TLS
‘Might be the perfect novel for our times.’
– Manchester Review of Books
‘Novelist, critic and film-maker, Adam Scovell is a prodigious young talent.’
– Psychogeographic Review
‘An intriguing meditation.’
– Bookmunch
‘A poignant, intriguing and ultimately satisfying read.’
– Never Imitate
‘How Pale the Winter has Made Us is able to do two things. One is to make the reader think and the other is to have fun while figuring out how the book will progress. It’s not easy to pull it off but Scovell manages with aplomb.’
– The Bobsphere
‘A deeply meditative experience… which poignantly considers how a person at a point of crisis dynamically engages with the past and immerses herself in the flow of time.’
– The Lonesome Reader
‘A big step forward from Scovell’s first novel Mothlight. The underlying connective tissue is more substantial. There’s much more for the reader to ponder and in so many more directions. The writing, though it still reflects Scovell’s signature tendency towards restraint, is getting looser and more emotive.’
– Vertigo
‘The writing is simply gorgeous and it is one of those books where the silky prose glides off the page.’
– Brown Flopsy’s Book Burrow
‘Scovell perfectly captures the eeriness of Strasbourg. The use of gothic imagery such as Goethe’s Erlkönig, the intense emotions Isabelle is going through, and the rich prose offer an immersive reading experience.’
– Museum of Modern Heart
About the author
Adam Scovell is a writer from Merseyside now based in London. He completed his PhD in Music at Goldsmiths in 2018. His work is regularly published by the British Film Institute, Sight & Sound, Little White Lies and Caught by the River. In 2017, his first book Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange was published by Auteur and University of Columbia Press. In 2019, his first novel Mothlight was published by Influx Press.
Paperback ISBN: 9781910312452
Ebook ISBN: 9781910312469
Publication date: 13 February 2020
Formats: Paperback / eBook