Astral Travel, about a charismatic but troubled Irishman and his effect on his family, explores the way that the secrets forged by cultural, religious and sexual prejudice can reverberate down the generations. It's also about telling stories, and the fact that the tales we tell about ourselves can profoundly affect the lives of others.
In a framing narration that exposes the slippery and contingent nature of story, an adult daughter, brought up on romantic lore about her now dead father but having experienced him very differently, tells how she tried to write about him, only to come up against too many mysteries and clashing versions of the family's past.
Yet when a buried truth emerges, the mysteries can be solved, and, via storytelling's power of empathy, she finally makes sense of it all.
Astral Travel by Elizabeth Baines was published by Salt Publishing in November 2020.
I have one print copy to giveaway today as part of this #RandomThingsTours Blog Tour.
Entry is simple, just fill out the competition widget in this post. UK entries only please.
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One print copy of Astral Travel by Elizabeth Baines
A fine novel, written with great skill and empathy.
-- Susan Osborne ― A Life In BooksBaines’s beautiful, evocative and insightful writing transforms what might have been a difficult, family drama into something far more extraordinary and optimistic. At its heart, Astral Travel is a novel about both the slipperiness of story-telling and its redemptive power. An utterly beguiling read!
I really loved this story... but it's not for the faint hearted. Highly recommended.
Astral Travel is written so vividly, in such a freewheeling style, that the narrative twists and turns are navigated with ease . . . By the time I’d finished this wonderful novel, I was hoping for a sequel
Her grandmother claimed to be descended from the family of the eighteenth-century Welsh plasterer-bard Will Hopkin, and undeterred by the fact that there was no proof of this, Elizabeth decided at an early age to be a writer in his footsteps.
Twitter @ElizabethBaines
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