Sealed

by Naomi Booth

Overview

Sealed is a gripping modern fable on motherhood, a terrifying portrait of ordinary people under threat from their own bodies

Heavily pregnant Alice and her partner Pete are done with the city. Alice is haunted by rumors of a skin-sealing epidemic starting to infect the urban population. She hopes their new remote mountain house will offer safety, a place to forget the nightmares and start their family. But the mountains and their people hold a different kind of danger. With their relationship under intolerable pressure, violence erupts and Alice is faced with the unthinkable as she fights to protect her unborn child.

Timely and suspenseful, Sealed is a gripping modern fable on motherhood, a terrifying portrait of ordinary people under threat from their own bodies and from the world around them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789091243
Publisher:	Titan
Publication date:	07/02/2019
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	205,796
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Naomi Booth is a fiction writer and academic. Her novella, The Lost Art of Sinking, emerged from research into the literary history of swooning, and won the Saboteur Award for Best Novella 2016 as well as being selected for New Writing North's Read Regional campaign 2017. Her first novel, Sealed, is a gripping modern fable on motherhood. She is currently working on a new novel and collection of short stories, and an academic monograph on passing out.

In 2018 Naomi was named in the Guardian's 'Fresh Voices: 50 Writers to Read Now'. She was also picked for the 'Not the Booker' shortlist and was long-listed for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award.

Naomi grew up in West Yorkshire and now lives in York, where she lectures in Creative Writing and Literature at York St John University.

Editorial Reviews

Booth's ability to create an emotional quest around Alice's dilemma is gripping. And when she describes the victims of the disease, well, it's enough to make your skin tingle.

The New York Times Book Review - Danielle Trussoni

★ 05/06/2019

Delivering bone-chilling suspense, debut author Booth reimagines dystopian SF as a terrifying modern tale of motherhood. Alice is 36 weeks pregnant, brimming with worry and obsession. As her city is inundated with cases of cutis, a grotesque illness that causes skin to seal over bodily orifices, she and her husband, Pete, move to a remote mountain home. Pete thinks Alice is just obsessed with finding something to fret about, but Alice begins to recognize that their secluded new environment may not be secluded enough. Reeling from the anxiety of impending motherhood, unstoppable biological dangers, and a relationship under unendurable pressure, Alice is left to decide whether her fear is, in fact, unfounded—or whether her paranoia is the only thing that can save her family. Booth paints a picture of good, everyday people under attack from their own bodies; the consistently tense imagery and tone create a vulnerability within the characters that is about individual biology as much as widespread disaster. Readers looking for an all-too-real dystopian scare will find this subtle, intense, deeply unnerving novel makes their skin crawl in the best way. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"Sealed refuses to be categorized: it is a pre-apocalyptic cautionary tale, an intense psychological thriller, a fable on motherhood, and pure body horror all wrapped in an unsettling package that will stay with readers long after they turn the final page." — Booklist

“gloriously tense” - Barnes & Noble SFF Blog

"Horror doesn’t have to be over the top to be effective, and Booth’s measured approach brilliantly proves it." - Vol. 1 Brooklyn

From the Publisher

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