A Granite Silence by Nina Allan (Riverrun, 2025) In 1934, eight-year-old Helen Priestly sets out from her home in Aberdeen, Scotland, and is never seen alive again. Nearly a century later, Nina Allen walks along Urquhart Road, where Helen lived with her parents, and decides to write about her. What follows is a novel that plays with the notion of a novel; a true crime story that questions which crimes are “true”; a court drama that scrambles ideas of victim and perpetrator; and a speculative fiction narrative that is interested in when and how we speculate—and in what directions we reach. “Even as I try to restrict myself to the facts,” writes Allan, “I come to realize I will never stop being a writer compelled to imagine, and what if the spaces of my mind offer shelter to witches as well as detectives?” What if, indeed. View this post on the web, subscribe to the newsletter, or reply via email.
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