Books

Jamie Gunn loves stories. His hero is his father, the world’s greatest storyteller. But then Jamie’s father dies. To find meaning in his father’s premature death, Jamie embarks on a quest to collect the stories of strangers. He meets Sheila Higginbottom, an odd recluse, who tells him the beginning of a perilous tale, the end of which, if you hear it, she says, will kill you. Time passes and Jamie grows up. In his early 20’s, he breaks through as an author. His book is chilling, and becomes an international bestseller. But soon Jamie’s book appears to be having a strange and disastrous effect on his readers. Jamie fears the story isn’t finished with him. Can he save his readers, and himself, from the end?

An epic, labyrinthine, metafictional novel about trauma, grief and guilt as generative and destructive forces in storytelling, The Last Story of Jamie Gunn is also a terrifying meditation on what happens when the stories we tell to survive take on a life of their own and refuse to let us go.

Whatever you do, don’t read the last page.