Books Books
Category: Ebooks, Fiction, Literary Fiction
Number of pages: 188
ISBN: 9781781723241
Publication date: June 16, 2016
Price: £9.99
Out of stock
Category: Ebooks, Fiction, Literary Fiction
Number of pages: 188
ISBN: 9781781723258
Publication date: June 16, 2016
Price: £7.99
Out of stock
‘A novel richly layered with both gothic appeal and intellectual depth’ – Wales Arts Review
‘A tale full of vigour and action: the author employs the genre of the Gothic novel with effortless mastery’ – Ofi Press
Masque is a richly gothic retelling of Gaston Leroux’s phantom of the opera story by debut novelist Bethany W Pope. Centre stage is promising young singer Christine, who, despite being devoted to her art, attracts the attention of both the Phantom (Erik), and rich Parisian theatre owner Raoul.
The intensely ambitious Christine finds herself caught between the twin evils of the Phantom’s murderous pursuit of artistic perfection and Raoul’s ‘romantic’ vision of her as a bourgeois wife. Her own desire to follow her operatic career becomes her guiding light, but none of the three leading characters can control the directions in which their passions lead them, while the beautiful masked skull of the opera house itself looms large over their respective fates. The resulting mix of love, rage, art and murderous intent, is explosive.
Love, lust, adventure, romance, and the monstrous nature of unfulfilled creativity await you here.
Everyone wears a mask. Look beneath it, if you dare.
Bethany W. Pope
Bethany W Pope is an LBA winning author, and a finalist for the Faulkner-Wisdom Awards, the Cinnamon Press Novel competition, and the Ink, Sweat and Tears poetry commission, with many other prize listings for prose and poetry. She received her PhD from Aberystwyth University’s Creative Writing programme, and her MA from the University of Wales Trinity St David. She has published several collections of poetry: A Radiance (Cultured Llama, 2012) Crown of Thorns, (Oneiros Books, 2013), The Gospel of Flies (Writing Knights Press 2014), and Undisturbed Circles (Lapwing, 2014). Her latest collection, The Rag and Boneyard, was rel6ased by Indigo Dreams in 2016 and her chapbook, Among the White Roots, was released by Three Drops Press in 2017. Her work has appeared in many literary magazines across Europe, and in several anthologies including The Poet’s Quest for God (Eyewear), A Flock of Shadows (Parthian Books), and Hallelujah for 50ft Women (Bloodaxe Books). Masque is her first novel, a richly gothic re-telling of Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera, and was published in 2016.
