Back to Sundial, where Rob will have to make a terrible choice. After all, her childhood home, Sundial, keeps many uncomfortable secrets, ranging from the awkward (her adoptive parents’ hippie off-the-grid style of living) to the downright disturbing (the bizarre family science experiments that involved overt animal abuse).īut when Rob’s eldest daughter Callie-a strange child who collects animal bones and whispers to imaginary friends no one else can see-starts exhibiting some disturbing and even potentially threatening behavior, she decides the only way to protect her perfect life is to take Callie back to where it all started, to where their family’s history of darkness ostensibly came from.

She’s got a husband and two daughters and if she had the sort of uncomfortable youth one doesn’t like to talk about in polite society, well, who can blame her. Part family drama, part psychological exploration, and part mystery thriller, the story follows Rob, a woman who initially seems like a typical suburban housewife.

Such is the case in Ward’s latest novel, Sundial. And I always think perhaps we’ve over thousands of years of myth-making and storytelling to ascribe acts and feelings to these supernatural tales or monster- or creature-based things that we can’t bear to accept perhaps might have human origins.” “I find those the more horrifying questions. “The things that really frighten me are more existential things, the things that go to the heart of and threaten or question human nature,” Ward explains. Ward’s fiction is notable for its dark and often uncomfortable psychological themes, though her stories include very few of the tropes and tricks most frequently associated with the horror genre and generally delight in turning expectations about what these stories should do and be on their heads. But I think that’s the only reason I can write it-because if I’m not afraid I don’t really know how you’d expect the reader to be afraid.” “I cannot watch horror films and I find horror really difficult to read. “I am a complete scaredy-cat,” Ward admits with a laugh. But the author herself isn’t much a fan of the genre as a consumer. In a genre that can often seem full to bursting with blood and gore, detailed descriptions of violent deaths, and literal monsters lurking in dark corners, her books have a distinctly more psychological bent, telling stories that are frequently as heartbreaking as they are disturbing. Catriona Ward is not your typical horror author.

Sundial book ward