Jo Mazelis – författare

Lucy Swann wants a new life. She's cut her hair, bought new clothes, but in a small town in France her flight is violently cut short. When Inspector Vivier investigates, the chance encounters of her last days take on a new significance. Her death, like a stone thrown into a pool, ripples into the lives of people who never knew her, and loved ones.

Ritual 1969 is a haunting collection of stories with an elusive strand of the otherworldly, from Jerwood Prize-winning author Jo Mazelis. With settings ranging from early twentieth-century France through 1960s South Wales to contemporary Europe, and across different genres, what holds this collection together is Mazelis’ singular vision and unswerving recreation of characters who are caught up in events and feelings they do not understand and cannot control.

It’s the 1970s, and a mysterious woman has a cache of letters to sell. They claim to tell the story of the death of Fanny Imlay, half-sister of Mary Shelley and daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft. Did Fanny really commit suicide in an inn in Swansea in 1816, as historians thought? The letters instead suggest a faked death and an escape from Fanny’s fraught family life. It could have been an independence of which Fanny’s mother would have been proud. But the letters also suggest the re-born Fanny remained misunderstood, mis-used and rejected, in the manner of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein monster.The women’s intertwining narratives begin to reflect each other as the mysteries multiply and resolve. Gothic body-swaps, dark mansions and unexpected deaths merge with 70s politics and feminism in this tour-de-force by Jerwood Prize-winning author Jo Mazelis.

It''s the 1970s, and a mysterious woman has a cache of letters which claim to tell the story of the death of Fanny Imlay, half-sister of Mary Shelley and daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft. Did Fanny really commit suicide in an inn in Swansea in 1816, as historians thought? The letters instead suggest a faked death and an escape from Fanny''s fraught family life. It could have been an independence of which Fanny''s mother would have been proud. But the letters also suggest the re-born Fanny remained misunderstood, mis-used and rejected, in the manner of Mary Shelley''s Frankenstein''s monster.The women''s intertwining narratives begin to reflect each other as the mysteries multiply and resolve. Gothic body-swaps, dark mansions and unexpected deaths merge with 70s politics and feminism in this tour-de-force by Jerwood Prize-winning author Jo Mazelis."The Wollstonecraft-Shelley story is a founding myth in Gothic literature; Jo Mazelis tears it to shreds and reassembles it, amid the thick sea mists of south Wales, with Cymbeline and the Manson girls among her dramatic sources." – Geoff Sawers, author of Widdershins Walk

Lucy Swann is trying on a new life. She leaves the UK without telling anyone that she is going away. Perhaps she'll only go for a week, or a month, she doesn't know yet. She's cut and dyed her hair, bought new clothes. She has only gone as far as a small town in Northern France when her journey is abruptly brought to an end by her violent death.A skilled writer, Jo Mazelis traces the events of Lucy's last days to give her a decent 'life before death'. We see her brush past a number of other lives; a troubled Canadian man, his brain damaged brother and poet wife, an African medical student, young lovers and elderly lovers, who misremember a crucial conversation. When Inspector Vivier and his handsome assistant Sabine Pelat begin their investigation all these take on a new significance.Lucy's death, like a stone thrown into a pool, sends out far reaching ripples - irredeemably altering the lives of all those who encountered her during her last hours, including those who never even knew her, as well as those of her loved ones back home.