The Trees
"Beautiful, devastating and utterly enchanting - a triumph." - Scotsman
There came an elastic aftershock of creaks and groans and then, softly softly, a chinking shower of rubbled cement. Leaves calmed and trunks stood serene. Where, not a minute before, there had been a suburb, there was now only woodland standing amid ruins…
There is no warning. No chance to prepare. The trees arrive in the night: thundering up through the ground, transforming streets and towns into shadowy forest.
Adrien Thomas has never been much of a hero. But when he realises that no help is coming, he ventures into this unrecognisable world. Alongside green-fingered Hannah and her teenage son Seb, Adrien sets out to find his wife and to discover just how deep the forest goes. Their journey will take them to a place of terrible beauty and violence, to the dark heart of nature and the darkness inside themselves.
"Beautiful, devastating and utterly enchanting - a triumph." - Scotsman
There came an elastic aftershock of creaks and groans and then, softly softly, a chinking shower of rubbled cement. Leaves calmed and trunks stood serene. Where, not a minute before, there had been a suburb, there was now only woodland standing amid ruins…
There is no warning. No chance to prepare. The trees arrive in the night: thundering up through the ground, transforming streets and towns into shadowy forest.
Adrien Thomas has never been much of a hero. But when he realises that no help is coming, he ventures into this unrecognisable world. Alongside green-fingered Hannah and her teenage son Seb, Adrien sets out to find his wife and to discover just how deep the forest goes. Their journey will take them to a place of terrible beauty and violence, to the dark heart of nature and the darkness inside themselves.
"'Strange and brilliantly unsettling, it's a vivid look at a world gone to the wild."
- Mail on Sunday
"An English ecological version of The Road."
- Guardian
More reviews of The Trees...
“The Trees does for trees what Hitchcock did for birds. You have been warned.” ― Irish Times
“The strength of the novel is in the visceral descriptions of the forest: the reader feels, smells and hears the trees, convincingly portrayed as sinister, formidable and with unnerving intentions of their own. Shaw gradually builds up a sense of the supernatural, including ‘whisperers’. A bold, intriguing conceit for a dystopian environmental novel . A valiant exploration into notions of power and leadership, and what humans can do when tested to their limits.” ― Observer, Paperback of the Week
“A strange and vivid journey into an ancient forest that has taken over the world with force. The Trees is a thought-provoking meditation on what it means to be wild. Death, darkness and eerie creatures lurk among the branches, but it’s the human characters that surprise the most … Ali Shaw once again weaves a fantastical and haunting story.” ― Eowyn Ivey, author of The Snow Child
“Shaw’s climax is like nothing else, crescendoing with almost CGI levels of spectacle as Tarantino meets Middle Earth.” ― Financial Times
“Brilliant … Masterfully written and utterly enthralling … Dark and beautiful ****” ― Grazia
“The Trees is a stunning and vivid examination of the relationship between humans and the environment … Shaw masterfully brings every detail of the book to life. A wonderfully imaginative story, but also a compelling social commentary.” ― Herald
“A fairy story for people who can still envisage a future that isn’t completely bleak.” ― Stanley Donwood, author of Humor
“A compelling adventure.” ― Marie Claire
“Simultaneously bewildering and yet somehow hauntingly familiar, forcing us to consider how the natural world has become an elusive stranger to us all . A complete triumph for Ali Shaw *****” ― Western Mail, Book of the Week
“A gripping journey to the heart of wilderness . The Trees is a rarity and an absolute must-read” ― Yorkshire Post
The Girl with Glass Feet
"Fantastically imagined... Only a heart of glass would be unmoved." - New York Times Book Review
A mysterious metamorphosis has taken hold of Ida MacLaird – she is slowly turning into glass. Fragile and determined to find a cure, she returns to the strange, enchanted island where she believes the transformation began, in search of reclusive Henry Fuwa, the one man who might just be able to help…
Instead she meets Midas Crook, and another transformation begins: as Midas helps Ida come to terms with her condition, they fall in love. What they need most is time – and time is slipping away fast.
Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize, Shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, Longlisted for Guardian First Book Award, Longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, Shortlisted Tähtifantasia Award Nominee.
"Fantastically imagined... Only a heart of glass would be unmoved." - New York Times Book Review
A mysterious metamorphosis has taken hold of Ida MacLaird – she is slowly turning into glass. Fragile and determined to find a cure, she returns to the strange, enchanted island where she believes the transformation began, in search of reclusive Henry Fuwa, the one man who might just be able to help…
Instead she meets Midas Crook, and another transformation begins: as Midas helps Ida come to terms with her condition, they fall in love. What they need most is time – and time is slipping away fast.
Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize,
Shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award,
Longlisted for Guardian First Book Award,
Longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize,
Shortlisted Tähtifantasia Award Nominee.
"The rare delight of a world freshly and richly imagined."
- San Francisco Book Review
"Shaw has worked the great tradition of European fairy tales and come up with an ingenious story ... A magical fable of fate and resignation."
- Guardian
More reviews of The Girl with Glass Feet
“Ali Shaw has created a memorable addition to [the] fabulist pantheon in his gorgeous first novel, The Girl with Glass Feet…. Over the course of this eerie, bewitching novel, the mixture of love and grief and the imminence of death become as memorable as Ida’s mysterious, dreadful transformation and Midas’s more achingly human one.” –Elizabeth Hand, Washington Post
“The Girl with Glass Feet is a love story, not just about two people falling in love, but also about love itself: its power, its limits, and its consequences… The look, the sound, and the scent of St. Hauda’s Land stay with you after turning the last page of this beautiful novel.” –Buzzy Jackson, The Boston Globe
“Ali Shaw’s engrossing and moving debut novel… is a story of a strange land and its strange inhabitants, but at heart it’s a sincere but unsentimental love story…. The joy that Ida and Midas share, after Midas takes those first risky steps toward love, is so beautifully captured that their happiness beats back the drear and shadows…. The dreamy atmosphere curls around you until you see, hear and smell the moors and bogs.” –Lisa McLendon, Wichita Eagle
“Ali Shaw shows immense promise with his deft use of language, which sings in a book that is at its heart filled with sadness. The soft light on the island plays coyly with the thick vegetation, casting glorious shadows and producing a riot of images all ably captured by Midas’ camera and Shaw’s prose.” –Vikram Johri, The Chicago Sun-Times
“Ali Shaw has a gift for storytelling and an obvious love of language. His descriptions are poetic and original…. The Girl With Glass Feet is a work of great imagination and talent.” –Corinna Lothar, The Washington Times
“Shaw’s novel flows gracefully and is wonderfully dreamlike, with the danger of the islands matched by the characters’ dark pasts.” –Publishers Weekly
“Ali Shaw offers the rare delight of a world freshly and richly imagined…. The story is soothingly spellbinding, pulling the reader with steady delicacy into the hearts and minds of its characters amid the enthralling murmur of the fantastical.” –Ariel Berg, The San Francisco Book Review
“Emotional entanglements on a faraway frozen island are shaped by romance and tragedy in a melancholic yet whimsical British debut…. [A] strikingly visual novel…. captivatingly ethereal.” –Kirkus Reviews
“The Girl with Glass Feet is weirdly beautiful and highly entertaining.” –Minneapolis Star Tribune
“The Girl with Glass Feet is not just special–it’s remarkable…. [This] debut novel conjures up the extraordinary and fantastic, yet places it firmly in our digital world…. It’s a very visual novel–readers who enjoy using their imagination will adore it.” –Helen Peacock, The Oxford Times (UK)
“A haunting and magical tale…. One of the most original and memorable love stories I’ve read in a long time…. It takes a real talent to create such an imaginative setting yet still make readers believe and care about the characters.” –Morag Lindsay, Aberdeen Press and Journal
The Man who Rained
From the Costa Prize shortlisted-author of The Girl with Glass Feet comes another magical novel of love, discovery and nature.
When Elsa’s father is killed in a tornado, all she wants is to escape – from New York, her job, her boyfriend – to somewhere new, anonymous, set apart.
For some years she has been haunted by a sight once seen from an aeroplane: a tiny, isolated settlement called Thunderstown. Thunderstown has received many a pilgrim, and young Elsa becomes its latest – drawn to this weather-ravaged backwater, this place rendered otherworldly by the superstitions of its denizens.
In Thunderstown, they say, the weather can come to life and when Elsa meets Finn Munro, an outcast living in the mountains above the town, she wonders whether she has witnessed just that. For Finn has an incredible secret: he has a thunderstorm inside of him. Not everyone in town wants happiness for Elsa and Finn. As events turn against them, can they weather the tempest – can they survive at all?
From the Costa Prize shortlisted-author of The Girl with Glass Feet comes another magical novel of love, discovery and nature.
When Elsa’s father is killed in a tornado, all she wants is to escape – from New York, her job, her boyfriend – to somewhere new, anonymous, set apart.
For some years she has been haunted by a sight once seen from an aeroplane: a tiny, isolated settlement called Thunderstown. Thunderstown has received many a pilgrim, and young Elsa becomes its latest – drawn to this weather-ravaged backwater, this place rendered otherworldly by the superstitions of its denizens.
In Thunderstown, they say, the weather can come to life and when Elsa meets Finn Munro, an outcast living in the mountains above the town, she wonders whether she has witnessed just that. For Finn has an incredible secret: he has a thunderstorm inside of him. Not everyone in town wants happiness for Elsa and Finn. As events turn against them, can they weather the tempest – can they survive at all?