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'Jeff is dying. Haunted by memories and grappling with the shame of his desires, he runs away to remote Scotland with a piece of experimental tech that allows him to enter the mind of someone in the past. Instructed to only use it three times, Jeff – self-indulgent, isolated and deteriorating – ignores this advice.
'In the late 1860s, Leonora lives a contented life in the Scottish Highlands, surrounded by nature, her hands and mind kept busy. Contemplating her future and the social conventions that bind her, a secret romantic friendship with the local laird is interrupted when her father sends her to stay with her aunt in Edinburgh – an intimidating, sooty city; the place where her mother perished.
'But Leonora’s ability to embrace her new life is shadowed by a dark presence that begins to lurk behind her eyes, and strange visions that bear no resemblance to anything she has ever seen or known…
'A Superior Spectre is a highly accomplished debut novel about our capacity for curiosity, and our dangerous entitlement to it, and reminds us the scariest ghosts aren’t those that go bump in the night, but those that are born and create a place for themselves in the human soul.'(Publication summary)
Notes
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Ventura Press sold UK rights to Angela Meyer’s debut novel A Superior Spectre to UK publisher Saraband. (Source : Books + Publishing News 14 November 2018)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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What I’m Reading
2020
single work
column
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2020; -
[Review] A Superior Spectre
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Aurealis , no. 113 2018; (p. 50-51)
— Review of A Superior Spectre 2018 single work novel -
Books Roundup Flames, A Superior Spectre, One Hundred Years of Dirt
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , July 2018;
— Review of Flames 2018 single work novel ; A Superior Spectre 2018 single work novel ; One Hundred Years of Dirt 2018 single work autobiography -
Angela Meyer : A Superior Spectre
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 28 July - 3 August 2018;'Angela Meyer’s first novel, A Superior Spectre, is a superior ghost story. It is a tale of two protagonists, a 19th-century Scottish woman and a 21st-century Australian man, who come to haunt each other, thanks to a pseudo-pharmaceutical that transports the contemporary narrator through time and space into the woman’s consciousness.' (Introduction)
-
Books Roundup Flames, A Superior Spectre, One Hundred Years of Dirt
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , July 2018;
— Review of Flames 2018 single work novel ; A Superior Spectre 2018 single work novel ; One Hundred Years of Dirt 2018 single work autobiography -
[Review] A Superior Spectre
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Aurealis , no. 113 2018; (p. 50-51)
— Review of A Superior Spectre 2018 single work novel -
Angela Meyer : A Superior Spectre
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 28 July - 3 August 2018;'Angela Meyer’s first novel, A Superior Spectre, is a superior ghost story. It is a tale of two protagonists, a 19th-century Scottish woman and a 21st-century Australian man, who come to haunt each other, thanks to a pseudo-pharmaceutical that transports the contemporary narrator through time and space into the woman’s consciousness.' (Introduction)
-
What I’m Reading
2020
single work
column
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2020;
Awards
- 2019 shortlisted Saltire Literary Awards — Saltire First Book of the Year Award
- 2019 shortlisted Readings Prizes — Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction
- 2019 shortlisted APA Book Design Awards — Best Designed Literary Fiction / Poetry Cover
- 2019 shortlisted Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) — Small Publishers' Adult Book of the Year
- 2019 shortlisted MUD Literary Prize
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cScotland,ccUnited Kingdom (UK),cWestern Europe, Europe,
- Melbourne, Victoria,
- 1860s