Murderers I Have Known: And Other Stories

Like her award-winning novels, Marina Warner’s stories conjure up mysteries and wonders in a physical world, treading a delicate, magical line between the natural and the supernatural, between openness and fear. In ‘Natural Limits’, a bereaved woman, contemplating the massacre of 11,000 virgins, comes to terms with the unimaginable. The title story and the ‘Canary’ search for signs of evil or innocence written on the body, and a ‘canary’ dies of toxic malice, while in ‘Daughters of the Game’ and ‘The Armour of San Gereone’ body doubles stand in for saints and film stars. Beneath a charismatic or saintly carapace there often turns out to be a man of straw. The ‘insomniac princess’ finds that unheard melodies are indeed sweeter; whereas other stories give voice to the traditional voiceless - the artist’s model, the film double, and, in a grisly reworking of the Brothers Grimm, a girl with bells not on her toes but on her hands. Here are fabulous images of saints and sinner, bats and nightingales, pink flesh and putrefaction in an electrifying new collection.