The Absolute Book: A Novel - Softcover

Knox, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593296753 ISBN 13: 9780593296752

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

A bewitching epic fantasy about a revenge killing, a mysterious scroll box that has survived centuries of fires, and the book that changed everything

"Intricately plotted and gorgeously written, The Absolute Book is a cinematic tale that is by turns dark and dreamlike, yet ultimately hopeful." --Deborah Harkness, New York Times bestselling author of A Discovery of Witches
 
"An instant classic . . . It is everything fantasy should be." --The Guardian

Taryn Cornick believes that the past--her sister's violent death, and her own ill-conceived revenge--is behind her, and she can get on with her life. She has written a successful book about the things that threaten libraries: insects, damp, light, fire, carelessness and uncaring . . . but not all of the attention it brings her is good.

A policeman, Jacob Berger, questions her about a cold case. Then there are questions about a fire in the library at her grandparents' house and an ancient scroll box known as the Firestarter, as well as threatening phone calls and a mysterious illness. Finally a shadowy young man named Shift appears, forcing Taryn and Jacob toward a reckoning felt in more than one world.

The Absolute Book is epic, action-packed fantasy in which hidden treasures are recovered, wicked things resurface, birds can talk, and dead sisters are a living force. It is a book of journeys and returns, from contemporary England to Auckland, New Zealand; from a magical fairyland to Purgatory. Above all, it is a declaration of love for stories and the ways in which they shape our worlds and create gods out of mortals.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Elizabeth Knox is the author of seventeen books, including the novels The Vintner's Luck, Dreamhunter, and Dreamquake, which received awards from the ALA, CCBC, Booklist, and the New York Public Library. An Arts Foundation Laureate, an officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, and the recipient of the Prime Minister's Award for Fiction, she lives with her husband and son in Wellington, New Zealand, where she teaches a course on world building at Victoria University.

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One

A Book with a Light in Its Long Perspective

When Taryn Cornick's sister was killed, she was carrying a book. People don't usually take books when out on a run, but Beatrice must have planned to stop, perhaps at the Pale Lady, where she was often seen tucked in a corner, reading, a pencil behind her ear.

The book in the bag still strapped to Beatrice's body when Timothy Webber bundled her into the boot of his car was the blockbuster of that year, 2003, a novel about tantalising, epoch-spanning conspiracies. Beatrice enjoyed those books, perhaps because they were often set in libraries.

The Cornick girls loved libraries, most of all the one at Princes Gate, which belonged to their grandfather, James Northover. Beatrice was seventeen and Taryn thirteen when their grandfather died. The family had to give up the debt-encumbered house-though Grandma Ruth stayed on in the gatehouse while she continued at her vet's practice. It was Grandma Ruth whom Beatrice was visiting when Webber found her.

Beatrice and Taryn's parents were separated. Basil Cornick was in New Zealand, playing the bluff fellow in a fantasy epic. Addy Cornick had been struggling with illness and was dispiriting company. Taryn would spend some of her holidays with her mother, then stay with friends. She never went near Princes Gate, because she couldn't cope with the changes. A farm conglomerate had taken over the estate. The new owners left the last of the wetlands intact, and the plantation forest with its kernel, a copse of ancient oaks. But the stone walls were dismantled to make long fields with nothing to impede the big harvesting machines-not walls, or drainage ditches, or the hawthorn hedges the foxes had followed.

The library had already gone, broken up before the sale. James Northover's books passed into the hands of the owners of antiquarian bookshops, except a few long-coveted items that went to his collector friends, perhaps including the ancient scroll box known as 'The Firestarter', because it was said to have survived no fewer than five fires in famous libraries.

So, the book bumping against Beatrice's shoulder blades as she took her last steps was one of those set in old museums and libraries. A book with a light in its long perspective, like the light of a grail. A book with scholarly heroes and hidden treasure.

Beatrice was running in her baggy sweats and bouncing backpack. It was autumn, and there was a light mist. The road between St Cynog's Cross and the village of Princes Gate Magna was thickly covered in fallen leaves, its surface amber but for two black streaks where the leaves had been chewed up and tossed aside by the tyres of passing cars. The road was quiet. Beatrice wasn't wearing headphones. She moved off onto the verge when she heard the car. The mist began to sparkle, and the reflectors on Beatrice's shoes flashed as the headlights caught them.

Whenever a restless night summoned her sister-her grey sweats and swinging ponytail-Taryn never found herself on that road. She was always in the car. In the driver's seat. She was the murderer, Timothy Webber. Taryn thought this might have been because she had spent so much time wondering why Webber had done it. Wondering how anyone does a thing like that.

The trial was held a year after Beatrice died. Taryn attended and became familiar with every detail of what happened-or, at least, what was known.

Webber's car hadn't clipped Beatrice because she wasn't far enough off the road. The police photographs showed a curved tyre track in the black mud. They showed how far he had swerved to catch her. There were no skid marks, because he'd braked already, reducing speed not to pass safely but to hit Beatrice hard enough, he hoped, to subdue her. His car cracked Beatrice's pelvis, and a roadside oak her skull. He stopped, got out, and scooped Beatrice up from where she lay in the lap of some tree roots. He put her in his boot.

Webber's lawyers let him take the stand, perhaps hoping his fecklessness would convince the jury that his actions lacked malice. He told the kind of feeble story kids concoct when they're caught out. He said he put Ms Cornick in his trunk to take her to hospital. But-the prosecution asked-wouldn't most people place an injured person in the back seat, or not move her at all and wait to flag down the next car?

Webber said he'd been too afraid to wait for someone to come along. It was a quiet road. He wasn't carrying a phone. It would probably have all gone better for him, he said, if he'd just driven off and had to face a charge of hit-and-run instead of this one. 'But I couldn't do that.' He screwed up his mouth in an expression of apology. 'Why I put her in my trunk rather than my back seat must have been because she'd soiled herself and was a bit of a mess.'

The jury moaned in anger.

Timothy Webber had been charged with manslaughter, not murder, because, the prosecutor explained to Beatrice's family, it was very difficult to prove intent. The police didn't want to risk him getting off altogether. Webber wasn't a bad character on paper. He had a job. He was an honest and reliable worker. He had no criminal record. He had friends and family. He hadn't been equipped for an abduction, wasn't carrying rope or duct tape. He hadn't lined his boot with plastic. He made no attempt to conceal anything, leaving Beatrice's thrown shoe where it lay, on the road, pointing back the way she'd come. He ran her down, but it was difficult to prove conclusively that it wasn't an accident. He may have bundled her into his boot and driven off, but in the end, all he had done was take her another two miles in the direction he'd been going, before performing a U-turn to drive to his sister's house. His sister called an ambulance. She said to the paramedics, then to the police, 'Tim just isn't very bright.'

Beatrice was dead when the ambulance arrived.

Taryn wanted to know what it had been like for her sister, locked in the dark of Webber's car boot. After the trial, a medical intern friend took a copy of the coroner's report to his colleague and arranged a meeting so the neurologist could tell Taryn how it might have been.

'It's unlikely your sister regained consciousness after the impact,' said the neurologist. 'She had a skull fracture, compression fractures in two cervical vertebrae, and the crucial thing, a brain stem injury. It was the swelling in your sister's brain stem that killed her-through uncontrollable blood pressure and disruptions to the normal rhythms of her heart. If you're wondering whether she suffered, she almost certainly knew nothing from the moment the car ran into her.' The neurologist's look said it all-how he respected Taryn's need to know. How this was all he could tell her. How he knew it could never be enough.

What he said helped Taryn believe what the jury had believed-that Webber wasn't a killer with a plan. He hadn't stalked her sister, and he wasn't prepared. He'd only nurtured a fantasy, then surrendered to an impulse. He pulled the wheel to the left. He picked Beatrice up. But she'd soiled herself and wasn't what he had wanted-a woman thrown down, stunned and helpless. It all went wrong for Webber. He hadn't felt what he'd hoped to feel, or gotten to do what he'd dreamed of doing, and he couldn't cope with any of it. And, because he didn't follow through and rape the woman he'd injured and abducted, maybe that was why he was able to stubbornly insist on his innocence. He hadn't meant to hurt Beatrice and was indignant that anyone would suggest he had. He just ran into her, then panicked. 'I was upset,' he said-almost as if he expected the court to kiss him better.

Webber was convicted of the charge of...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593296753
• ISBN 13: 9780593296752
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 640
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe GmbH; kundenservice@penguinrandomhouse.de; ; Neumarkter Straße 28; München; Bayern; 81673; Deutschland