Mr. Wicker

by Maria Alexander

Overview

Alicia Baum is missing a deadly childhood memory. Located beyond life, The Library of Lost Childhood Memories holds the answer. But the Librarian is Mr. Wicker—a seductive yet sinister creature with an unthinkable past and an agenda just as lethal. When Alicia meets a child psychiatrist investigating the phenomenon of "Mr. Wicker" in his small sleeping patients, it stirs a storm of supernatural activity in both the hospital and Alicia's heart. Get swept up in the mystery, the history, and the dark romance of the world's most wicked library with MR. WICKER.

Winner of the 2014 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781732454248
Publisher:	Maria Alexander
Publication date:	01/15/2019
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	284
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.64(d)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Convincing in its haunting whimsy, Alexander's emotionally complex faerie tale comments on grim reality with chilling metaphors. . . Alexander (By the Pricking) makes the impossible feel probable, anchoring fantasy in everyday struggles. Alicia's spitfire defiance and charming vulnerability, and the eventual romance between her and Dr. Farron, inject warmth into chilling encounters between a world that shouldn't exist and undependable reality. Illness, loss, and heartache color this splendid, bittersweet ode to the ghosts of childhood.

From Library Journal

Starred Review, Debut of the Month

"...the fantastic premise of memories so terrible they need to be excised and hidden away makes this a horror novel to anticipate."

"Suicide, love, lust, lost dreams and twisted purgatories...Maria Alexander's Mr. Wicker is an original, crafted of startling images and darkly poetic language. Eerily effective." --Steven Barnes, author of Lion's Blood



"Elegant chills, genuine awe, and true tragedy are all ingredients in the spell cast by Maria Alexander's Mr. Wicker. Anyone who has encountered Maria's short stories surely expects her first novel to be extraordinary, and she doesn't disappoint. Mr. Wicker is rich, lovely, and deeply unnerving." --Lisa Morton, author of Maledictionand Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween

From the Publisher

09/01/2014
Convincing in its haunting whimsy, Alexander’s emotionally complex faerie tale comments on grim reality with chilling metaphors. A suicide attempt leads failed horror novelist Alicia Baum to the Library of Lost Childhood Memories and Mr. Wicker, a sinister man who arouses both her passion and her disgust, before she returns to life. She ends up in the care of Dr. Farron, a gentle psychologist researching the concept of bogeymen. Alicia strives to recover missing childhood memories as increasingly violent accidents befall her friends and family, and she grows more and more convinced that Mr. Wicker is not only real but intimately connected to her past. Alexander (By the Pricking) makes the impossible feel probable, anchoring fantasy in everyday struggles. Alicia’s spitfire defiance and charming vulnerability, and the eventual romance between her and Dr. Farron, inject warmth into chilling encounters between a world that shouldn’t exist and undependable reality. Illness, loss, and heartache color this splendid, bittersweet ode to the ghosts of childhood. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 10/15/2014
Despondent and with a string of unsuccessful books in her wake, horror writer Alicia Baum commits suicide by slitting her wrists in the bath. But instead of dying, Alicia goes to the Library of Lost Childhood Memories where she meets the sinister Mr. Wicker, keeper of memories that should never be recalled. Alicia intrigues Mr. Wicker, who sends her back to her life rather than on to the hereafter, and she is rushed to a psychiatric hospital for treatment. While unconscious in the emergency room, Alicia murmurs the name of Mr. Wicker, and the doctor who treats her is determined to discover why she and others who suffer great trauma whisper that same name. VERDICT The psychiatric hospital setting is an effective way to build dread and hopelessness, and Alicia is a stronger character than she at first appears. The origins of this debut novel were apparently as a screenplay, and while a few awkward artifacts of that stage of its development remain, the fantastic premise of memories so terrible they need to be excised and hidden away makes this a horror novel to anticipate.

Library Journal