Reviews
Death and the Seaside
'For the size of the work it packs a mighty, subversive punch.'
Jackie Law, Never Imitate
'Death and the Seaside is a psychologically astute novel of power, control and influence... Blending layers of memory and imagination there are signposts to the end everywhere, if you only know where to look. Clever and really quite disturbing.'
Mel Mitchell, Nudge
'How could I not love a novel about reading and writing, about the boundary between fact and fiction, and about maverick psychology?'
Anne Goodwin, Annecdotal
'a fantastically uncanny and unsettling jaunt to the British seaside... Death and the Seaside is a tense, tightly plotted and darkly comical novel'
Eleanor Baggley, BookSmoke
'Dense, complex, thought-provoking, it manages to be at once a fairytale and a philosophical treatise, high-octane thriller and literary interrogation... The end of the novel, abrupt and death-haunted, feels as neat and tight as a key in a lock, and sheds light on the mysteries that have gone before.'
Sarah Crown, The Guardian
'Reality and fiction begin to merge in this tense, atmospheric story about suggestibility, semiotics and storytelling... When I finished the novel, I almost felt as if I’d been put under a spell.'
The Perfectionist Pen
'Alison Moore is one of the most gifted and interesting writers of weird fiction in Britain today.'
Nina Allan, The Spider's House
'brutally funny... she is both gifted stylist and talented creator of a new English grotesque'
Isabel Berwick, Financial Times
'absorbing and sharp... this short, elegant novel is a glimpse into the subconscious – like a lucid dream'
Ruth McKee, The Irish Times
'As with earlier masters of the genre such as Daphne du Maurier, Moore creates a psychological thriller dripping with foreboding... Another triumph from Moore, her clear and unambiguous writing style as well as her ability to build tension will appeal to both adolescents and adults.'
Jacqueline Snider, Library Journal
'this psychological thriller... has all the qualities of a powerful page-turner: an insecure protagonist, a predator who knows how to press her buttons and a holiday location with its own very creepy connotations.'
Susan G. Cole, NOW Magazine
'a concise and satisfying psychological drama that explores the intersection of stories and life as well as power, obsession and fear.'
Melanie Brannagan Frederiksen, Winnipeg Free Press
'A skin-crawling exercise in obsession and manipulation, Moore's psychological rollercoaster will have you turning pages late into the night.'
Open Book
'Death and the Seaside certainly packs both literary and psychologically thrilling punches... Moore masterfully dials up the tension throughout, leading to an unexpected finale that feels both inevitable and deliciously satisfying.'
Colette Maitland, The New Quarterly
'I read this strange novel in a single sitting, wide-eyed and stunned into a state of perpetual anxiety.'
Kevin Woodley, Seaborne Magazine