Recently one of my favorite authors, Christopher Priest, discovered a stash of first editions of three of his novels, including the one that had the most effect on a much younger Bucknall, The Affirmation. (I reviewed it here, and reviewed Priest’s latest, The Islanders, set in the same fictional place, here. I’d forgotten until just now but I’d reviewed another of his novels, The Prestige, here.) He offered these first editions up for sale on his blog at very reasonable prices so I jumped on it and bought a copy of The Affirmation from 1981. (I have this vision of these books being discovered hidden deep within a boxroom, a quintessentially English place and nothing so banal as a basement where most of my books are stored.) […]
READ MORE