The constant command in the works of Alberto Manguel is ‘look closer’. From his terrifying novel, News from a Foreign Country Came to his A History of Reading and Reading Pictures, A History of Love and Hate and Into the Looking Glass Wood and his book of notes that analyse the film The Bride of Frankenstein he surprises, shocks and awakens us. He is both the wizard releasing coloured doves from a black top hat and the dedicated scholar soberly at desk.
He is fascinated by duality (duality is the whole message of his early novel) and it is everybody’s duality that is the subject of this new story. The book itself has its own duality too, for it can be read either as a seductive little novella about Robert Louis Stevenson’s last brave months on the island of Apia in Samoa, where he had gone to seek a cure for his tuberculosis, or as a sinister tale of evil infesting and infecting the soul.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in