The Somnambulist, by Johnathan Barnes, has me mad with envy. It's (another) book I wish I had written.
I received an advance readers copy from Harper today. The blurbs are glowing, the opening paragraphs are enviable and the package is beautiful (US cover above - see the UK cover here.) It was bought and edited in the US by Diana Gill, one of the best editors in the business.
The book arrives on US shelves in February 2008.
From James Morrow's blurb:
"Four score and nine years ago, old Doc Caligari opened up his famous cabinet and unleashed his slinky somnambulist. Now Johnathan Barnes has given us a different sort of sleepwalker, a milk-swilling golem around whom swirls a literary maelstrom in which we glimpse not only German expressionism but Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, Mary Shelley, Dr. Who, Mr. Hyde, Hammer horror films, and a Lovecraftian eldritch unnameable or two, all of it served up with macabre with and stylistic panache. "