‘My footsteps ricochet down the hall, as though someone follows me. A shadow bleeds across the broken kitchen window. The dying tree in the back garden scratches at the eaves where the guttering rattles, invisible marbles poured into the pipes. A door slams shut down the end of the upstairs corridor, in my father’s old room, a sound like a shouted rebuke.

I know what they are, these things that go bump in the dark.
They are echoes of the past.’

From the moment I read the dedication, ‘there is no time to make enemies; this one’s for the heartbreakers’ I thought – I’m going to like this book.

This is always dangerous – many of us will know that anticipation may lead to disappointment but in this case I need not have worried – the author makes no promises he can’t deliver.

Mr Bennett’s debut novel is a little out of this world – his characters inhabit a darker region where truly nothing is as it seems. The indications are there to read.

Aaron Edgeway is ‘not like other people’. He lives in a haunted house and invites his lover over the threshold, keeping the cellar door locked against a shifting world of dangerous secrets and broken dreams.

‘I am not the person you are looking for.’

The moral is clear – enter if you dare - yet in suggesting that Aaron should write down whatever is troubling him, it is the fly that offers comfort to the spider.

‘I feel the release of a small pressure, the movement of daggers in my heart, as I put pen to paper and allow the pain to flow freely.’

And so the story begins – with the ending.

‘Unrequited’ is a glittering prize of a novel – it’s like a gift wrapped in layers of living tissue that unravel to reach the pink crystal heart within.

The structure is fascinating - a series of time frames back into the past yet these frames contain mirrors and unlike the camera that never lies, mirrors can be deceptive.

‘My recollection... is not the perfect mirror of events. Rather my memories are time-ruptured shrapnel, scattered pieces, some facing up, some facing down.’

The reader is warned yet led through a maze and fails to see what is coming. The narrative builds to a shocking and violent resolution that is foreshadowed but never becomes explicit until it is far too late.

There is much to enjoy in this novel. The characters feel like people you have met or maybe glimpsed in the shadows – faces in the background of ‘a life more ordinary’ dragged into the spotlight and to the harsh light of day - where visions of happy ever after crumble into ‘walls of ash’. There is raw energy in the writing that captures the grief of unrequited love.

To me one of the most telling passages occurs early on. Aaron seeks solace in the glossy self help pages of a magazine and is defeated by a ‘get over it ‘solution of ‘feng shui for the heartbroken’ He comments wearily, ‘You can’t move a sofa around to forget that, once upon a time, you were loved.’ Who can blame him for seeking a more definite resolution?

Lyrical, romantic and seductive, this is a tale that beguiles the senses. James Bennett takes the age old theme of unrequited love and weaves a modern parable of love and loss, mystery and revenge.

This is a stylish trip through ecstasy and nightmare that leaves the reader wide-eyed and staring at the dark.

‘Love is Chaos.’

Sarah Ann Saltonstall

Gosh thanks Sarah. I'm really glad you enjoyed it so much.

Best

JB

I can only agree with you, Sarah - I'm about halfway through "Unrequited" now and it's totally shit-hot. I utterly love it!! Everyone should rush out and buy it now - and it's not often I say that about anything!

Must rush and read more now, JB.

A
xxx

PS I am totally in love with Aaron and will fight you for him - will pistols at dawn do??!

Oh I did

totally shit-hot

Absolutely!

Sarah

Bless you both very very much

JB xxx

Sarah, this sounds exactly as I expected it to - I'm rushing out to get me a copy now. S