Where The Shadows End

Sam, a 45-year-old Londoner of dual heritage, has lived his life accompanied by voices no one else can hear. Chief among them is the taunting echo of a childhood bully who refuses to let Sam forget the guilt he carries over his mother’s death.

When his elusive, dream-like girlfriend, known only as Boat Woman, disappears without warning, Sam’s fragile world begins to unravel, and he becomes convinced that only his death can protect those he loves.

As the past and present collide in Sam’s fractured mind, he is drawn into a labyrinth of memory and revelation that challenges everything he thought he knew. But the voices that haunt him may yet become his guides, if he can only find the courage to listen.

Luminous, unsettling and tender, Where the Shadows End is a powerful meditation on self-acceptance, the nature of guilt and the need to belong.​

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‘An important new voice. The writing is strong, alive and vital. A dense, complex work which deserves to be read at least twice.’

Anthony Joseph, T. S. Eliot Prize winning poet of Sonnets for Albert.

 

‘Energy of life, energy of language, energy of spirit – Where the Shadows End has these and more to spare. I can’t remember being so electrified by a new novel. In telling the story of Sam, with voices in his head and secrets forming and surrounding him, Louisa Bello has written a contemporary Mrs Dalloway. Here’s London, with all its terrifying gabble and hilarious sass. Here’s a falling apart hero with a psychic connection to the everything and the everyone. Here’s a writer to love, share and celebrate.’

Toby Litt, author of A Writer’s Diary.

 

‘A seamstress of voices, Louisa Bello’s writing is always tactile and poignant.’

Nicolás Obregón, author of The Sugar Man & the Inspector Iwata Trilogy.

 

‘Louisa Bello’s debut novel is as beautiful, bold, unsettling and compelling as a first book must surely be. We are all Sam, Bello’s fascinating and compelling mouthpiece. His is an urban and private chaos so real, so ordinary, yet so high-rise with guilt, regrets, and...all the good and bad folk we all love and fear – and memories so familiar as to make this anything but an ordinary read. It’s funny, soulful, familiar and strange, upsetting and noisy – and an utter joy.’

Ian Shaw, Broadcaster & BBC Jazz Musician of the Year.

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Where The Shadows End is a staggering portrait of London told through one man’s kaleidoscopic thoughts. It vibrantly illustrates that there is a universe inside every stranger you pass by on the street. I loved it.’

Vida Adamczewski, author of Amphibian and Other Bodies.

 

‘In Louisa Bello’s powerful and wise debut, the reader finds a troubled but compassionate home in the mind of Sam the protagonist, as we are carried along by his scarred imagination as much as his kind heart. With adventurousness and flair, Bello crafts a stream-of-consciousness narrative that blurs the lines between the past and the present, and draws from natural, ancestral and urban worlds to offer a heartbreaking exploration of family and belonging.’

Isabelle Baafi, author of Chaotic Good.

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Pre-order now from our bookshop!​

 

Read more about Louisa via our authors page.