Why read The Witnesses are Gone?

Book cover of The Witnesses are Gone

Book description

Moving into an old and decaying house, Martin Swann discovers a box of video cassettes in the garden shed. One of them is a bootleg copy of a morbid and disturbing film by obscure French director, Jean Rien.

The discovery leads Martin on a search for the director's other films,…

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Topics

Paris

Genres

Literary fiction

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Witnesses are Gone as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Simon Avery

Author

I knew Joel for over twenty years before his untimely death in 2013. He was a huge inspiration as a writer (and human being) to me. The narrator, Martin, has recently bought a house and found some old VHS cassettes, one of which has a copy of a French art film, L’eclipse des sens–the work of the director Jean Rien. Soon, despite Martin’s world coming apart, he becomes obsessed with the director’s work, and he embarks on a hallucinogenic odyssey of discovery into the underworld.

Lane was also an award-winning poet and it shows; his words are concise and beautifully…

From Simon's list on The best fiction within fiction with a heavy dose of an age-old mystery waiting to be solved.