The Sensationist - Hardcover

This is the story of disastrous love affair, told against the background of a cold northern city. David, the self-serving sensationalist of the title, is a newcomer to the city. Viewed through his cool, foreign eye the intricate daily life of the town I reduced to a series of encounters - chance and sometimes fortuitous meetings with strangers David is an opportunist seducer. Isolated by the nature of the work that brought him to the city in the first place and by his temperament, he pursues a solitary quest for sensation, recoiling at once from each new conquest. But when he meets Lucy, everything changes. He is captivated at once, intrigued by her beauty and her sadness, drawn on by the coolness that seems to more than match his own. Gradually, it becomes an obsession to him that she should return his love and her apparent lack of interest in him and in herself grows to torment him. How can so ill-fated a love affair end? This short, cryptic novel draws the reader, alarm bells ringing, to its frightening conclusion. Fragmented, elliptical, poetic, this is a complex tale that explores the meaning of passion and despair. Its effect is disturbing.

Charles Palliser was born in America but has spent most of his adult life in Britain. He took a degree at Oxford and has taught English Studies at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow since 1974. His first novel, The Quincunx, was published by Canongate in 1989.