THE HUNDRED AND NINETY-NINE STEPS, Michel Faber

The skeletons exhumed so far had all been buried facing east, the direction of Jerusalem, to help Judgement Day run more smoothly.

I bought this back in 2014, and somehow only got around to it at the start of the year. A flawless long short story. Just revel in his clean, direct, shining prose. A very barbed love story with a historical mystery and something like a ghost story carefully threaded around it, but mostly a remarkable miniature of proper literary writing that sweeps all those things around into a brief portrait of a life emerging from fog. Affecting and quietly beautiful. Faber doesn’t show off, doesn’t dance in front of you, just leads you on a walk, remains by your side murmuring his story with a small smile and an occasional warm, mist-dewed hand on your arm.

Through the velux window she could see a trio of seagulls, hopping from roof-tile to roof-tile, chortling at her goose-pimpled, wingless body as she threw aside the bedclothes.

THE HUNDRED AND NINETY-NINE STEPS, Michel Faber (UK) (US+)