The Lost History of Dreams

By Kris Waldherr

Book Overview

A post-mortem photographer unearths dark secrets from the past that may hold the key to his future in this "sensual, twisting gothic tale...in the tradition of A.S. Byatt's Possession, Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale, and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights" (BookPage).

All love stories are ghost stories in disguise. "This one happily succeeds at both" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

When famed Byronesque poet Hugh de Bonne is discovered dead in his bath one morning, his cousin Robert Highstead, a post-mortem photographer, is charged with a simple task: transport Hugh's remains for burial in a chapel. This chapel, a stained-glass folly set on the moors, was built by de Bonne sixteen years earlier to house the remains of his beloved wife and muse, Ada. Since then, the chapel has been locked and abandoned, a pilgrimage site for the rabid fans of de Bonne's last book, The Lost History of Dreams.

However, Ada's grief-stricken niece refuses to open the glass chapel for Robert unless he agrees to her bargain: before he can lay Hugh to rest, Robert must record Isabelle's story of Ada and Hugh's ill-fated marriage over the course of five nights.

As the mystery of Ada and Hugh's relationship unfolds, so too does the secret behind Robert's own marriage--including that of his fragile wife, Sida, who has not been the same since a tragic accident three years earlier and the origins of his morbid profession that has him seeing things he shouldn't...things from beyond the grave.

Blurring the line between the past and the present, truth and fiction, and ultimately, life and death, The Lost History of Dreams is "a surrealist, haunting tale of suspense where every prediction turns out to be merely a step toward a bigger reveal" (Booklist).

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1982101024
• ISBN13: 9781982101022
• Release Date: February 2020
• Publisher: Atria Books
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.63 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.3" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Loved this Victorian gothic.

If you loved The Little Stranger or Wurthering Heights, you should enjoy this novel. The reader is filled with a dark.sense of foreboding yet at times also glimmers of hope and happiness that are just barely out of reach. I enjoyed all of the characters and I thought at one point early on, I had the mystery figured out but was quite pleasantly surprised at the end when I realized I hadn't. Very pleased with the ending as well. Gave just enough information to form a scene in one's mind as to what might come next for the 2 main characters. Loved the touches of the supernatural and macabre as well. A very well done first novel.