Myerson, Julie
Entry updated 11 March 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1960- ) UK journalist and author whose novels, beginning with Sleepwalking (1994), are often infiltrated by supernatural elements, sometimes as in this case family ghosts. The protagonist of The Story of You (2006) is haunted by what may be the ghost of a man she broke up with decades ago; the Young Adult Out of Breath (2008) tests the growth trajectory of a young woman through her encounters with what may be a gang of feral children, perhaps not naturally conceived; The Quickening (2013) is a gothic tale set in the Caribbean (see Gothic SF); hints of message-bearing intrusions on the part of a Mysterious Stranger from beyond figure conspicuously in The Stopped Heart (2016).
Myerson's only tale of direct sf interest is Then (2011), set in a devastated Near Future London, frozen (a likely outcome of Climate Change in the UK if Amoc fails, the "Atlantic meridional overturning circulation" that current warms the British Isles) and partially abandoned. Wandering through this landscape, the protagonist recounts her own story, recuperating flashes of horror (see Horror in SF) as her Amnesia lifts jaggedly. The absence of context thus generated makes it possible to think of Myerson as a Mainstream Writer of SF, though her ease with her repertory of characters is redemptive. [JC]
Julie Susan Myerson
born Nottingham, Nottinghamshire: 2 June 1960
works (selected)
- Sleepwalking (London: Picador, 1994) [hb/]
- The Touch (London: Picador, 1996) [hb/Andrew Olney]
- The Story of You (London: Jonathan Cape, 2006) [hb/Malika/Getty Images]
- Out of Breath (London: Jonathan Cape, 2008) [hb/Christine Mathieu/Millennium Images]
- Then (London: Jonathan Cape, 2011) [hb/Suzanne Dean]
- The Quickening (London: Arrow Books/Hammer, 2013) [hb/]
- The Stopped Heart (London: Jonathan Cape, 2016) [hb/Steve Banks]
links
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