'The Pursuit Of William Abbey' Travels A Twisty Path
Claire North's new book starts with a doctor witnessing an atrocity in Africa in 1884, but becomes a spy thriller, a horror story, a supernatural mystery and an indictment of capitalism and empire.
You have to be careful. Claire North's The Pursuit of William Abbey is not the book you think it is.
It is not the book on page 1 that you think it might become on page 10 and it is not the same book on page 50 that it is on page 100. It is a historical fiction that becomes a horror story, a thriller, a supernatural mystery, a spy story, a heavily political indictment of capitalism and empire, a war story, a love story. It is the incomplete tale of a life (two lives, ten lives) told over
