Reviews
Hauntingly delicious
Sunday Post
Helen McClory is an extremely accomplished and intelligent novelist, which is what makes Bitterhall such a delight …[It] quickly establishes itself in the great Scottish tradition of Hogg's Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner and Stevenson's Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde
Scotland on Sunday
A dark novel filled with obsession and intrigue
Scots Magazine
A ghostly, shape-shifting novel from a rising Scottish writer… playfully alert to ideas of authenticity, possession and the malleable nature of narrative
Daily Mail
snatched, impressionistic chapters [which] can switch between personal reflection and prose poetry – an elegant style which only gains in effectiveness as the haunted, gothic undercurrent of the novel becomes more apparent
Herald
a true wordsmith and sorcerer who can bend words around her fingers into poetic and fantastic sentences
Goodreads
[Bitterhall has] the enjoyment factor – I liked spending time with these characters. [McClory's] writing is immersive, [she] creates a very particular world. I really recommend it
BBC Radio Scotland
Reeling with edge of your seat atmosphere Bitterhall is brilliantly unnerving novel that explores the liminal blurring of inner life with outward reality. Laced with dry wit, this shrewdly-written read rises to a gripping, question-raising climax
Lovereading.co.uk
A ... substantial meal, rich and gamey if one was to take Atwood's metaphor before she could snatch it back and drive a dining fork through its now blackened heart. ... intriguing revelations ... What is fascinating about the book is the role of the diary and how James Lennoxlove appears to be pushing from the past into the present
Sunday Times
A dark, intricate tale of a haunting…the plot, intriguing in itself, works as a vessel through which objective reality can be explored and questioned [but] McClory always draws us back in with her solid grasp on the physical world and the people who inhabit it
Press & Journal
McClory's poetic prose is punctuated by haunting images and stark observations, deftly moving from the internal to the external [with] a witty sense of humour. A novel of pieces, short snappy chapters, multiple narrators and myriad themes…expertly drawn
Dundee Courier
Moving, ambitious and strange in the best way ... a story about what it is to be haunted, which haunts you in turn
The Bookseller
Bitterhall, McClory's finest achievement to date, is many things: a mesmerising neo-gothic yarn; a technically adroit act of storytelling; a showcase for McClory's poetically rich prose; and a deeply moving story of three broken young lives
The Skinny
A tantalising deep dive into characters' lives. This haunting story of love and friendship will have you hooked from the get-go. If you like a novel that leaves you questioning everything, this one is for you
Scottish Field
brings together the literary and the metaphysical ... You might be drawn in by the writing, but you’ll stay for the stories. And what more can you ask of a novel?
Snack Magazine
And writing out of Scotland, Helen McClory’s boldly playful practice is poising itself to open up whole new genres for our new age
The Guardian, UK's 10 best emerging writers
Thematically weighty and richly poetic, as you'd expect from McClory, and spiced with a delicious sense of irony, this is the ghost story given a 21st century shake-down
Lunate Fiction - One of the 2021 Books of the Year
About the Book
'Hauntingly delicious' – Sunday Post
In a darkening season in a northern city, Daniel, Orla and Tom's lives intersect through a peculiar flatshare and a stolen nineteenth-century diary written by a dashing gentlemen who may not be entirely dead. An interwar-themed Hallowe'en party leads to a series of entanglements; a longed-for sexual encounter, a betrayal, and a reality destroying moment of possession.
As the consequences unfurl, Bitterhall's narrative reveals the ways in which our subjectivity tampers with the notion of an objective reality, and delves into how we represent – and understand – our muddled, haunted selves.
The Author
Helen McClory
Helen McClory is the author of two story collections, On the Edges of Vision (Queen’s Ferry Press), a winner of the Saltire First Book of the Year award, and Mayhem & Death (404 Ink), as well as a novel, Flesh of the Peach (Freight, 2017). The Goldblum Variations – a collection of experimental micro-fictions – was published by 404 Ink, and Penguin in 2019. Her short stories have been listed for distinction in The Best of British Fantasy (2018), The Best of British and Irish Flash Fictions (2018/19), and nominated for the Pushcart prize. Helen is a part-time lecturer at the University of Glasgow and co-founder of writing retreat Write Toscana.
