It’s a collegial week on Talking Scared. ‘Cos I’m talking dark, occult academia with someone very local to me.

Kate van der Borgh’s debut, And He Shall Appear is basically a sinister version of my own life. It’s about a young working class lad, like me, who goes to a prestigious university, like me… but there ours paths diverge, as he meets a fellow student who perhaps has diabolical powers.

It’s a twisted, obscure, psychological study of unreliable memory, inescapable guilt, and the haunting of not-knowing oneself. Kate and I talk about all of that, as well as the class divide, northern accents, the terror of infinity, favourite ghosts stories, and memories of underrage drinking in the same bars.

The book is great. I’m delighted to help celebrate it.

Enjoy.

• The Sense of an Ending (2011), by Julian Barnes
• The Little Stranger (2009), by Sarah Waters
• The Pallbearer’s Club (2022), by Paul Tremblay
• We Were Villains (2017), by M. L. Rio
• The Secret History (1992), by Donna Tartt
• “All Souls,” in The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton (1973), by Edith Wharton

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