Alice Shipley is living with her husband in the “still, arid heat” of 1950s Tangier, troubled by the “vaporous sheen” of her memories, and never leaving their apartment. Photograph: Jack Birns/Getty ImagesĬhristine Mangan’s debut, Tangerine (Little, Brown, £13.99), gives us another woman in danger to add to the current surfeit. She keeps on dismissing events as mere “night terrors”, even when she learns that the house was built on the remains of a ruined chapel, itself built on an ancient pagan site.ġ950s Tangier is the setting for Christine Mangan’s Tangerine. On her first night at the house, Zoe hears scratching sounds, mournful laments, and wakes from a strange, sexual dream with bruises like teeth marks. That’s brave.” As the whispers and rumours coalesce, she learns its history – how a widow is said to have gone mad there a century ago, and killed her son how a local boy vanished there on a dare the previous year. On her first night on the island a barmaid tells her: “Staying out there on your own. She’s rented the McBride house, and owner Mick Drummond is strangely reluctant to let her learn anything about its past. Zoe arrives on a remote Scottish island to find some peace, and to paint, as her marriage falls apart. I f Stephanie Merritt’s While You Sleep (HarperCollins, £12.99) were a horror film, its protagonist, Zoe Adams, would have you shouting at the screen as she repeatedly refuses to take seriously the signs of approaching peril.
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