Carnivalesque

For fans of Angela Carter, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell and Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray BradburyShade, published in 2004, has sold almost 30,000 copies through BookscanNeil Jordan is a multi-award winning writer, director and producer. He won an Oscar for Best Screenplay for The Crying Game, and a BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay for The End of the Affair. His screen credits also include The Company of Wolves, Interview with the Vampire, Ondine and the TV series The BorgiasNeil Jordan was born in 1950 in Sligo. His first book of stories, Night in Tunisia, won the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1979, and his subsequent critically acclaimed novels include The Past, Sunrise with Sea Monster, Shade and, most recently, The Drowned Detective. The films he has written and directed have won multiple awards, including an Academy Award (The Crying Game), a Golden Bear at Venice (Michael Collins), a Silver Bear at Berlin (The Butcher Boy) and several BAFTAS (Mona Lisa and The End of the Affair). He lives in Dublin. neiljordan.comIt looked like any other carnival, but of course it wasn't. It had its own little backstreets, its alleyways of hanging bulbs and ghost trains and Punch and Judy stands . And at the end of one he saw the Hall of Mirrors. There were looping strings of carnival lights leading towards it, and a large sign in mirrored glass reading 'Burleigh's Amazing Hall of Mirrors' and the sign reflected the lights in all sorts of magically distorted ways. To Andy and his parents, it looks like any other carnival: creaking ghost train, rusty rollercoaster and circus performers. But of course it isn't. Drawn to the hall of mirrors, Andy enters and is hypnotised by the many selves staring back at him. Sometime later, one of those selves walks out rejoins his parents - leaving Andy trapped inside the glass, snatched from the tensions of his suburban home and transported to a world where the laws of gravity are meaningless and time performs acrobatic tricks. And now an identical stranger inhabits Andy's life, unsettling his mother with a curious blankness, as mysterious events start unfolding in their Irish coastal town.A bewitching and haunting coming-of-age tale from the Oscar-winning novelist and film director Neil JordanWritten in beautifully poetic proseHas an aching, plaintive melancholyHis cinematic sensibility yields prose of the most bewitching kindOne of Ireland's most talented artistsJordan has a light touch and a clear eye on matters of the heartHis dialogue and characterisation shineHis belief in language is absolute, as is his mastery of itYou can never know where you are going with Neil Jordan . ExtraordinaryThe cinematic potential for that longed-for movie is striking