Alice Thompson
{{short description|Scottish novelist}}
{{Other people|Alice Thompson}}
{{EngvarB|date=February 2018}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2018}}
Alice Thompson (born in Edinburgh) is a Scottish novelist.[http://www.booksfromscotland.com/Authors/Alice-Thompson/SRB-Interview "Alice Thompson: The Scottish Review of Books Interview"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091223215757/http://www.booksfromscotland.com/Authors/Alice-Thompson/SRB-Interview |date=23 December 2009}}, Scottish Review of Books. Accessed 16 December 2010.Holcombe, Garan. [http://literature.britishcouncil.org/alice-thompson "Alice Thompson"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140606011103/http://literature.britishcouncil.org/alice-thompson |date=6 June 2014 }}, British Council. Accessed 24 September 2011.{{cite web |url=https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/lifestyle/books/review-the-book-collector-by-alice-thompson-1-7628055|title=Review: The Book Collector, by Alice Thompson |website=www.yorkshirepost.co.uk |date=19 December 2015 |language=en |access-date=24 November 2017}}{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/17/the-book-collector-alice-thompson-review |title=The Book Collector by Alice Thompson review – elegant and shocking entertainment |last=Feay |first=Suzi |date=17 December 2015 |work=The Guardian |access-date=24 November 2017 |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}}
Thompson was educated at St George's School, Edinburgh,[http://www.heraldscotland.com/books-poetry/interviews/alice-thompson-discovers-island-life.20947670 Alice Thompson discovers island life | Herald Scotland] Retrieved 7 Jan 2014. then read English at Oxford University and wrote her Ph.D. thesis on Henry James. In the 1980s she was the keyboard player with rock band The Woodentops. She has a son, and lives in Edinburgh. Her novel Justine was the joint winner of the 1996 James Tait Black Memorial Prize.{{cite web |url=https://www.saltpublishing.com/collections/author-alice-thompson |title=Author: Alice Thompson |last=Salt |website=Salt |language=en |access-date=24 November 2017}} She also won a Creative Scotland Award in 2000, and was a Writer in Residence in Shetland.{{cite web |url=https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/alice-thompson |title=Alice Thompson - Literature |website=literature.britishcouncil.org |language=en |access-date=24 November 2017}}
Novels
- Killing Time (1990) - novella
- Justine (1996)
- Pandora's Box (1998)
- Pharos: A Ghost Story (2002)
- The Falconer (2008)
- The Existential Detective (2010)
- Burnt Island (2013)
- The Book Collector (2015)
Critical reception
"Their romance had been like a fairytale. If only she could work out which fairytale it was, it would somehow help her." Will it be The Red Shoes, whose heroine is danced to death, punished by her worldly thoughts, or Mr Fox, whose wife is enjoined to "Be bold, be bold, but not too bold"? Or maybe it's a modern tale, such as Rebecca, with its saturnine hero obsessed with a dead wife and a ghastly secret."
"THERE is a distinctive ambience to an Alice Thompson novel. From Justine, her debut which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, through Pandora's Box, Pharos, The Falconer, The Existential Detective and Burnt Island, there is a kind of gothic postmodernism."
"A genuinely eerie tale, in a perfect setting and told with just the right amount of ambiguity."{{cite book |url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/alice-thompson/pharos/ |title=PHAROS by Alice Thompson {{!}} Kirkus Reviews |language=en-us}}
"Some books evoke a particular piece of music, others, a particular color. The Falconer (2008) by Alice Thompson reminded me of a painting in Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery, which fascinated me as a child. The Fairy Raid (1867) by Scottish pre-Raphaelite Noel Paton depicts a fairy caravan traveling through a grove with a bounty of stolen children, having left changelings in their stead. It's an enchanting, overtly romantic work, but death and duplicity hide in the shadows, symbolizing the Victorian fear of high childhood mortality."{{cite news |url=http://mccallumsmith.com/the-falconer-by-alice-thompson/ |title=The Falconer by Alice Thompson |access-date=24 November 2017 |language=en-US}}
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20120223171946/http://www.tworavenspress.com/TRP%20The%20Act%20of%20Writing.html The Act of Writing], article by Alice Thompson
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thompson, Alice}}
Category:People educated at St George's School, Edinburgh
Category:20th-century Scottish novelists
Category:21st-century Scottish novelists
Category:20th-century Scottish women writers
Category:21st-century Scottish women writers
Category:Alumni of the University of Oxford
Category:James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients
Category:Writers from Edinburgh
Category:Scottish keyboardists