Spotlight: The Dollmaker – Nina Allan
About the book:
Stitch by perfect stitch, Andrew Garvie makes exquisite dolls in the finest antique style. Like him, they are diminutive but graceful, unique, and with surprising depths. Perhaps that’s why he answers the enigmatic personal ad in his collector’s magazine.
Letter by letter, Bramber Winters reveals more of her strange, sheltered life in an institution on Bodmin Moor, and the terrible events that put her there as a child. Andrew knows what it is to be trapped, and as they knit closer together, he weaves a curious plan to rescue her.
On his journey through the old towns of England, he reads the fairy tales of Ewa Chaplin–potent, eldritch stories which, like her lifelike dolls, pluck at the edges of reality and thread their way into his mind. When Andrew and Bramber meet at last, they will have a choice–to break free and, unlike their dolls, come to life.
A love story of two very real, unusual people, The Dollmaker is also a novel rich with wonders: Andrew’s quest and Bramber’s letters unspool around the dark fables that give our familiar world an uncanny edge. It is this touch of magic that, like the blink of a doll’s eyes, tricks our own.
Published : April 4th, 2019 (Riverrun)
About the author:
I was born in London and grew up in the south east of England. My first published piece of fiction appeared in a magazine called Dark Horizons in 2002. Since then, my stories have featured in numerous magazines and anthologies including The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Best Horror of the Year and The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime. I have a lifelong love of speculative fiction, including science fiction, the gothic, weird fiction and good old fashioned ghost stories. I am particularly interested in work that tests the boundaries of genre: playing with philosophical ideas, savouring language, and experimenting with form. Ideas around landscape and sense of place, memory and personal identity form important strands in all my novels and stories. Recurring obsessions include old clocks and rare insects, forgotten manuscripts and abandoned houses. Writers who have inspired me include Iris Murdoch, Joyce Carol Oates, M. John Harrison, Paul Auster, Ali Smith and Alasdair Gray. I have won the British Science Fiction Award, the Novella Award, the Kitschies Red Tentacle and France’s Grand Prix de L’Imaginaire.
In May 2018 I was named as one of the Guardian’s Fresh Voices: 50 writers you should read now.
My literary agent is Anna Webber, of United Agents.
I live and work in Rothesay, on the Isle of Bute.
