

It is worth keeping in mind that I am just about the last person to ever read a horror story, and yet I really enjoyed it (though it is rather shuddery). This is a novel about which it is difficult to write without potential spoilers, and so while I am intending to keep this short – I can’t promise the following won’t be a tad spoilery. That nightmare thing of trying to get people to believe the unbelievable, of having no way out of a situation with only one possible horrifying conclusion. The horror lies in the way the story plays upon the reader’s fears of entrapment and loss of control and confusion of identity.

The Victorian Chaise-Longue is generally described as a horror story. So, I decided to give it a try – after all it’s very short.

I knew however, that I liked Marghanita Laski’s writing, her female characters particularly are very real, flawed and believable, and her novel Little Boy Lost is one of the most poignantly heart-rending novels I have ever read (that’s not a criticism). This disturbing – but compelling little novel, is one I hadn’t thought I wanted to read.
