The Dollmaker - Softcover

"Beautifully written and deeply strange." --The Times (UK)

"[Allan's] literary sensibility fuses the fantastic and the mundane to great effect." --The Guardian

"Exquisite...Whether read as a romance, a fairy tale, a lament, or combinations of the three: The Dollmaker is a bewitching story." --Foreword Reviews (starred review)

"[An] unsettling, intricately constructed, and teasingly elliptical tale of misfits, outcasts, and outsiders...[Allan's] talents are evident." --Daily Mail

"A uniquely beautiful read." --Image Magazine

"In clean, beautiful, agile prose, Nina Allan is able to conjure a recognizable England and a place of deep enchantment. The world of The Dollmaker is not only one we know, it seems to know us, and readers will lose and find themselves inside Allan's wonderful creation. A fantastic book, revealing a zone of wonder and a world of truth." --Andrew O'Hagan, author of The Illuminations

"Amazing experiments are still possible with the form of the novel! I was deeply impressed by the complexity of this elegant, beautiful and subtly scary book." --Daniel Kehlmann, author of Measuring the World

"Mesmerizing, richly layered and wholly original--worthy of a modern Grimm." --Andrew Caldecott, author of Rotherweird

"As uncanny and disquieting as a Hans Bellmer photograph, yet rooted--like all of Nina Allan's superb novels--in a minutely observed everyday reality that feels almost too familiar. This is a masterful and multi-layered haunted toyshop of a novel, but who exactly is playing with who?" --Tony White, author of The Fountain in the Forest

"A beautifully uncanny tale in which each moment chimes against every other, doubles abounding, until you--along with the characters--are not sure where flesh becomes doll and vice versa. A haunting meditation on the relation of art to life that will leave you quietly unsettled, and better for it." --Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World

A love story of two very real, unusual people, and a novel rich with wonders that shines a radically different light on society's marginal figures.

Stitch by perfect stitch, Andrew Garvie makes exquisite dolls in the finest antique style. Like him, they are diminutive, but graceful, unique and with surprising depths. Perhaps that's why he answers the enigmatic personal ad in his collector's magazine.

Letter by letter, Bramber Winters reveals more of her strange, sheltered life in an institution on Bodmin Moor, and the terrible events that put her there as a child. Andrew knows what it is to be trapped; and as they knit closer together, he weaves a curious plan to rescue her.

On his journey through the old towns of England he reads the fairytales of Ewa Chaplin--potent, eldritch stories which, like her lifelike dolls, pluck at the edges of reality and thread their way into his mind. When Andrew and Bramber meet at last, they will have a choice--to remain alone with their painful pasts or break free and, unlike their dolls, come to life.