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HarperNorth has pre-empted the “spine-tingling” début novel by Chris Carse Wilson, communications manager at V&A Dundee.
Daisy Watt, commissioning editor, acquired world all language rights to Fray from Jenny Todd at The Literary Office for publication in hardback, e-book and audio in April 2023.
Fray is set in the remote wilderness of the Scottish Highlands, and follows a nameless narrator as they desperately search for their missing father. Instead, they discover an abandoned cottage filled with thousands of confusing, terrifying scraps of paper, detailing the father’s frenzied attempts to find his dead wife.
Watt said: “Fray is a missing-person mystery like no other. The voice of its nameless narrator held me transfixed – as did its fierce, alluring mountain and forest setting – and the ending is exquisitely ambiguous. Even more standout for me, though, is that disguised within Chris Carse Wilson’s spine-tingling writing is an acuity about grief and mental health that I’ve never encountered before in fiction. We at HarperNorth have high hopes Fray will be the most haunting and mysterious début novel of 2023, and we are overjoyed to be launching Chris’s career as a formidable new literary talent.”
Carse Wilson is a passionate advocate for mental health awareness who was diagnosed as autistic as an adult. He wrote Fray over several years in 15-minute bursts on the bus to and from work.
He said: “Fray is a book about family, love and overcoming grief, set against the beauty and the threat of the Scottish Highland wilderness. I’ve always written in secret, even hiding this book from my wife until it was finished, and I’m thrilled to now be working with the amazing HarperNorth team to bring this gripping story to the world.
“This is an exciting, intense book which explores the redemptive power of nature and the universal challenges we all face living with our own mental health. I can’t wait to share it with booksellers and readers.”
Jenny Todd said: “Inspired by the richness and imprecision of language, Chris Carse Wilson’s Fray is one of the most taut, accomplished and page-turning débuts I have ever read.”