The Uninvited
‘A masterclass in creepiness – as unsettling as Margaret Atwood or Kazuo Ishiguro’
– Independent on Sunday
A seven-year-old girl puts a nail-gun to her grandmother’s neck and fires. An isolated incident, say the experts. The experts are wrong. Across the world, children are killing their families. Is violence contagious?
As chilling murders by children grip the country, anthropologist Hesketh Lock has his own mystery to solve: a bizarre scandal in the Taiwan timber industry. Hesketh has never been good at relationships: Asperger’s Syndrome has seen to that. But he does have a talent for spotting behavioural patterns, and an outsider’s fascination with group dynamics.
Nothing obvious connects Hesketh’s Southeast Asian case with the atrocities back home. Or with the increasingly odd behaviour of his beloved step-son, Freddy. But when Hesketh’s Taiwan contact dies shockingly and more acts of sabotage and child violence sweep the globe, he is forced to acknowledge possibilities that defy the rational principles on which he has staked his life, his career and, most devastatingly of all, his role as a father.
Part psychological thriller, part dystopian nightmare, The Uninvited is a powerful and viscerally unsettling portrait of apocalypse in embryo.
‘The Uninvited is a masterclass in creepiness’ The Independent
‘Expertly paced … utterly gripping’ Daily Mail
‘We Need to Talk About Kevin meets The Children of Men … delayed flights will be no problem with this in your bag’ Elle Summer Reads
‘Tightly wrought … chilling’ The Guardian
“Despite the slightly absurd premise, this almost-horror is a compelling story told through the eyes of a refreshingly honest narrator.” New Citylit, Chicago
“An intricate, intelligent, nightmarish eco-prophecy delivered in pacey fictional form”. Kirkus Reviews
‘Dystopian science fiction that is a pleasure to read … psychologically rich and consistently thought-provoking …The Uninvited is always absorbing, sometimes funny, often poignant’ Sunday Times
‘Extraordinary … A hugely inventive generic hybrid’ Independent
‘There is no question that The Uninvited makes for a gripping read … [Jensen is] a great British author with a talent for brilliantly written and truly original tales’ Daily Express
‘Genuinely unnerving’ Times Literary Supplement
‘Asperger’s-afflicted protagonists are surely nearing their sell-by-dates but there’s nothing jaded about this psycho/eco thriller, in spite of its socially-challenged star … Expertly paced, combining moments of chilling horror with deadpan comedy, this audacious novel is utterly gripping’ Daily Mail
‘Brilliantly effective … Jensen has carved out a fictional space dense with elements of fantasy and thriller, satire and SF, science and cod-science, but entirely her own. The mainstream is moving towards her, rather than the other way around’ The Guardian
‘Recalling Margaret Atwood’s haunting The Handmaid’s Tale … A compelling, poetic and subtle psychological thriller’ The Lady
‘Reads as a cross between thriller, science-fiction novel and social commentary. Quite an achievement!’ **** Lifestyle
‘This brilliantly odd thriller mixes the quirky charm of The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night-time with the sci-fi strangeness of Doctor Who … You’ll be kept guessing until the final pages’ Easy Living
‘As dazzling as it is unsettling’ Voyager
‘I’ve never read anything like this. Chilling, and thought-provoking, this book offers a vision of a future where things go badly wrong … written by an author with precision timing and a innate talent for the genre … Compelling to read, difficult to put down, Liz Jensen’s new novel is both terrifying and redemptive’ Monique Roffey, author of The White Woman on the Green Bicycle
Excerpt
