Alison Moore

With an abandoned degree behind her and a thirtieth birthday approaching, amateur writer Bonnie Falls moves out of her parentsâe(tm) home into a nearby flat. Her landlady, Sylvia Slythe, takes an interest in Bonnie, encouraging her to finish one of her stories, in which a young woman moves to the seaside, where she comes under strange influences. As summer approaches, Sylvia suggests to Bonnie that, as neither of them has anyone else to go on holiday with, they should go away together âe" to the seaside, perhaps. The new novel from the author of the Man Booker-shortlisted The Lighthouse is a tense and moreish confection of semiotics, suggestibility and creative writing with real psychological depth and, in Bonnie Falls and Sylvia Slythe, two unforgettable characters.

Death and the Seaside

Sierra Bradley

The story is a bit boring and slow. Not much happens most of the time except characters eating, sleeping, or looking at things, while occasionally vaguely strange things occur. There are random chapters where nothing at all happens, like the chapter where a character goes on and on about literary references to death and the sea. The only reason I finished it was because it was very short, and it was just intriguing enough for me to want to see if there would be an interesting conclusion. The “twist” (if you can even call it that) at the end was weirdly executed; somehow too obvious yet too obtuse at the same time.

Death and the Seaside

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