Pale Ones

BARTHOLOMEW RICHARD EMENIKE BENNETT was born in Leicester, the middle son of an American father and English mother. He has studied and worked in the US and New Zealand, and has a First Class Honours degree in Literature from the University of East Anglia. Since graduation he has had various jobs: primarily software developer, but also tutor, nanny, data-entry clerk and call-centre rep, project manager and J-Badger (ask your dad), painter and decorator, and (very slightly) handy-man, working at locations all across the United Kingdom. He has also been known to dabble in online bookselling.The Pale Ones is his first published work, although he has been writing fiction continuously, long-form and short, since 2002. Currently he is at work on a novel about three children who experience a long, wintry December filled with gifts. Of the unusual variety. And trials. Of the trying variety.Currently he lives in southeast London, with his wife and two young children. He is a longstanding member of Leather Lane Writers Group, and since childhood, a dedicated reader of all manner of books, but especially tales of the “horror”. And in fact, some of the paper-packed rooms that feature in The Pale Ones bear a remarkable resemblance to locales in his own abode…

"The nameless narrator of Bartholomew Bennett’s The Pale Ones is a washed-up thirtysomething whose girlfriend has left him and fled to Japan. Trawling charity shops for valuable books and selling them online, he meets a fellow dealer and is drawn into an ambiguous relationship with the obnoxious Harris. They leave London and head north, ostensibly to collect books from charity shops and split the proceeds. But Harris has a mesmerising hold over people – our narrator included – and takes more than he gives. Bennett’s short novel is notable for the gradual, creeping unease with which he imbues a series of apparently mundane events, bringing to mind the subtle horrors of Robert Aickman’s short stories. The leisurely, unsettling narrative includes some startlingly graphic images: 'The helix of his left ear partially eaten away by a sore the colour of a waterlogged raisin.' The Pale Ones is an impressive debut." – The Guardian; "The Pale Ones unsettles in the way of a parable by some contemporary, edgeland Lovecraft. The unnerving images which flicker in a sagging English landscape of charity shops, seaside bed and breakfasts and amusement arcades linger in my imagination ages after reading." – Anthony Cartwright, author of Heartland, BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime; "What begins as a dark comedy of book collecting gradually accumulates a profound sense of occult dread, which lingers long after the book is finished. It’s a real addition to the literature of the uncanny and an impressive debut for its uncompromising author." – Ramsey Campbell, author of the Brichester Mythos trilogy