SHORTLISTED FOR THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD 2010.
In a remote, piney wood in Finland stands a convalescent hospital called Suvanto. Is is the early twentieth century and the patients, all women, seek relief from ailments real and imagined. The upper floors house foreign women of privilege, tended to by Sunny Taylor, an American who has fled an ill-starred life, only to retreat behind a mask of crisp professionalism.
On a late summer's day, a new patient arrives on Sunny's ward, a faded, irascible former ballroom-dance instructor named Julia Dey. Sunny takes it upon herself to pierce the mystery of Julia's reserve, but soon Julia's tightly coiled anger places her at the centre of the ward's tangled life...
Rezensionen / Stimmen
Exceptional... more than simply an exercise in chilling atmospherics... Chapman takes the women's - often seemingly petty - hopes and fears, and creates a fascinating portrait of group consciousness. A psychologically unnerving, elusive and readable book * Financial Times * A gem; weird, vivid and acrobatic, its intricacies are sophisticated, its stance beguiling and complex. This is a writer of real power and aplomb -- Lucy Ellmann * Guardian * This scary, peculiar story of institutionalised women is immaculately handled and builds to a disturbing but inevitable climax * The Times * A beautiful, edgy and captivating novel -- Victoria Moore * Daily Mail * An eerily brilliant, psychologically sharp take on the Bacchae set in a 1920s Finnish sanatorium -- Adrian Turpin * Herald, Christmas round up * Quietly and carefully, Chapman evokes the oppressive indoor life of the self-interned 'up-patients'. There is an elegant sparseness to her writing, complemented by her use of tactile metaphors -- Lucy Scholes * Times Literary Supplement * Has the compelling horror of a Gothic fairy tale... Chapman creates a novel that stays with the reader and leaves a sense of being drawn inexorably into a deepening nightmare -- Tina Jackson * Metro * Subtly, disquietingly hermetic * The Lady * Rural Finland may not seem a very likely locale for a gripping intellectual thriller, but pulling this off is merely the first of Maile Chapman's many accomplishments here. Your Presence Is Requested at Suvanto - what a title! - is as creepy as Patricia Highsmith at her best and as psychologically sharp (and confounding) as early Ian McEwan. With its portrayal of how quickly the conscience in shipwreck succumbs to delusion, Chapman has written more than a beautifully observed and utterly convincing first novel: she has written something of unfakeable importance -- Tom Bissell This subtly unnerving tale raise goose bumps as the tension builds towards the menacing finale * Mslexia *
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ISBN-13
978-1-4070-7417-7 (9781407074177)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
Maile Chapman's stories have appeared in A Public Space, Literary Review, the Mississippi Review, and Post Road. She earned her MFA from Syracuse University and is currently a Schaeffer Fellow in Fiction at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
