Mothlight
Adam Scovell
“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, author of Landmarks and The Old Ways
“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, author of The Gallows Pole and Under the Rock
“The English landscape, peculiarly charged domestic spaces, a suggestion of the uncanny and a mind unravelling at the heart of it all. Restrained, precise, perceptive writing. Fine British weird.”
– Adam Nevill, author of The Ritual
“Innovative, moody and melancholy. This intriguing novel's obsessions will become yours.”
– Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World
“An eerily compelling book reminiscent of Arthur Machen, in which the self dissolves into the flapping of flimsy wings.”
– Luke Turner, author of Out of the Woods
A short film about the upcoming novel, Mothlight featuring interviews Adam Scovell, and readings by the actor, Paul Carmichael.
Mothlight by Adam Scovell
“The idea was lost but the memory was there.”
Phyllis Ewans, a prominent researcher in Lepidoptera and a keen walker, has died of old age. Thomas, a much younger fellow researcher of moths first met Phyllis when he was a child. He became her carer and companion, having rekindled her acquaintance in later life.
Increasingly possessed by thoughts that he somehow actually is Phyllis Ewans, and unable to rid himself of the feeling that she is haunting him, Thomas must discover her secrets through her many possessions and photographs, before he is lost permanently in a labyrinth of memories long past.
Steeped in dusty melancholy and analogue shadows, MOTHLIGHT is an uncanny story of grief, memory and the price of obsession.
.Praise for Adam Scovell and Mothlight
“An eerily compelling book reminiscent of Arthur Machen, in which the self dissolves into the flapping of flimsy wings.”
– Luke Turner, author of Out of the Woods
“A melancholy and beautiful reflection on the secrets of a life, the suggestive power of photography and how it is possible to be haunted, even if we don't believe in ghosts.”
– Paul Scraton, author of Ghosts on the Shore
“Echoes Peter Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio… a strange, ominous book.”
– SFX
“…small presses like Influx are publishing works of stunning new talent – I picked up Adam Scovell’s Mothlight and gulped it down like water after a long thirst.”
– OX Magazine
“Echoes some of the real heavyweights of European literature; there are whispers of Kafka, Samuel Beckett, and Thomas Bernhard, while more contemporary comparisons include Paul Auster and the late-stage, philosophical novels of Don Delillo. It is an accomplished novel by a very skilled writer, and its pages contain enough clues to suggest that there is much more to come from the author.”
– Subscript
“Mothlight is a novel poised between reality and fantasy, and Scovell’s presentation of half-formed truths makes reality as distorted for the reader as it is for Thomas.”
– The London Magazine
“Pushes the Sebaldian novel into the realm of the genuinely surreal.”
– Splice
“What I’m most impressed about in this novel is Scovell’s language. His sentences tend to be long, associative, attempting verbally to catch sensations as precisely as possible.”
– Helsinki Book Review
“A richly textured slow burner... Mothlight has a fantastic sense of atmosphere.”
– Starburst
“A wonderful slice of British weird fiction that will appeal to everybody who loves uncanny stories… one of the most captivating novels of the year.”
– Rising Shadow
“Don’t expect to see any Wicker Man influences in this novel... a different breed of horror heavy with ambiguity and atmosphere.”
– Ginger Nuts of Horror
“Scovell writes with the eye of a cinematographer... a disturbing and haunting work.”
– Psychogeographic Review
“The uncanny elements float through the tale like motes from the slowly disintegrating specimens. The reader cannot help but breath them in.”
– Never Imitate
“A well-crafted, complex and moving piece that tackles love, loss, forgiveness and the line between inspiration and obsession.”
– Buzz
“Mothlight’s great strength: its atmosphere, the evocation of the strangeness we experience in the everyday. It’s a novel steeped in ghosts, rooted in an English landscape, and I’ve little doubt that many people will find its sensations very recognisable.”
– The Independent Literary Fiction Blog
“Scovell has done in Mothlight what Alain Robbe-Grillet’s classic In the Labyrinth achieves, where the narrator creates an entire story out of several contingent items around him.”
– Into the Gyre
“Reminiscent of W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants.”
– Pendora Magazine
“Writes with intelligence, passion and sensitivity... I can’t wait to see what Adam Scovell does next.”
– The Haunted Bookshelf
“A compelling book that amply rewards reading and re-reading.”
– Starburst, on Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange
"Adam Scovell, Mark Fisher and Robert Macfarlane are the enfants terrible of British Folk Horror"
– Open Graves, Open Minds
Further Reading
‘Into the Eerie’ documentary
– BBC Radio 3
Author Q&A: Adam Scovell
– Big Issue North
Interview with Adam Scovell
– Civilian Reader
Interview with Adam Scovell
– Ginger Nuts of Horror
Spinning Around, Utterly Dazed: Adam Scovell on writing Mothlight
– This is Splice
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: 9781910312377
Ebook ISBN: 9781910312384
Publication date: February 2019
Formats: Paperback / eBook