Description: "Burnside's writing conveys an almost palpable thrill of discovery, a delight in the play of his imagination over this bleak terrain, an irrepressible joy in cultivating metaphor after metaphor and seeing them all, improbably, bloom.... The narrative has the quick urgency of a threatened creature: it moves like a cockroach streaking from light to the safer dark.... The emotion this brilliant and disturbing novel leaves you with is like the spooked feeling Leonard experiences at the sudden intimation of 'some essence, some hidden principle' in the world: 'It takes your breath away, but you don't know if that comes from awe or terror.'The Glisteristhatkind of story. It's terrifying, and it feels like a gift." -The New York Times Book Review "John Burnside can make even the most mundane scene feel threatening. Oddly tender, for all the terror it evokes, his prose has a seductive depth and clarity that's impossible to resist. His novel,The Glister, is a delighta scary, fascinating exploration of innocence and evil, and the thin margin that often separates the two." -Scott Smith, author ofA Simple PlanandThe Ruins "I love John Burnside's writingone fresh perception, one unexpected observation, driving again and again through to the next, until some entirely unforeseen point or insight can shine forth. You have to be brilliant, wide awake, and wide open to write this way, and Burnside is all three.The Glisterproves John Burnside is also a master at the creation of dread, tension and mystery. What a dazzling book this is." -Peter Straub "John Burnside'sThe Glistermasquerades as an enthralling murder mystery but his greater, subtle purpose is to investigate the mysteries of evil, death and eternity, and so provide a work of astounding moral clarity and transcendence." -Jim Crace, author ofThe Pesthouse "The Glisteris wickedly good. Burnside writes with a dark and beautiful splendor, navigating the space between despair and redemption in a simply brilliant story that will linger long after the last, haunting images." -Keith Donohue, author ofThe Stolen Child "In his bleakly beautiful seventh novel, Scottish author Burnside delivers a cautionary tale illustrating that greed and an indifference to suffering are the real horrors of modern life... Burnside expertly details an apocalyptic landscape where the 'expectation of failure' is rampant... Burnside's flawless prose explores how defeat is only a state of mind." -Publishers Weekly "What begins as a spooky tale of serial murder evolves into something much stranger and riskier-an eschatological fable about innocence, evil and personal responsibility Burnside uses plot, character and mystery only as gambits to launch his spiritual exploration of the horrifyingly thin line between childhood innocence and sociopathic amorality, and ultimately between sins of commission like serial murder and sins of omission like serial cowardice. A truly unusual experience awaits readers willing to forgo the obvious pleasures of the genre." -Kirkus Reviews "There is something consistently oneiric about John Burnside's work; not just in the hallucinatory qualities of his prose but also in the original sense of the word as referring to a vision divinely sent. See his novels as the planet's dreaming; as the symbolic working-through and analogue of its emotional problems, inspired by its past. Fiction, and what it can do, matters to Burnside; it can add something to the world that the word needs.... Burnside doesn't really do dialogue, but his skill is such that his characters breathe t

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