The Party Wall

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Pub Date 17 Sep 2020 | Archive Date 20 Sep 2020
Honno Press | Honno Modern Fiction

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Description

Whatever I can do for Freya, I’ll gladly and honourably do, he told himself, grateful for the calm intentness of his spirit. She schooled him. She made him a better person. There was an overarching sense of forgiveness. Not that there was anything Mark should be forgiven for.

Mark lives next door to Freya. When her husband dies tragically, he determines to be her saviour come what may. Whether that means walking the dog, minding the house or taking her out on day trips. However, her neighbours the other side keep getting in the way, as do her two lumpen brothers-in-law… But Mark has another life, one he hasn’t told Freya about, one that increasingly impinges on his desire to make Freya his own. As he lies in his bed at night, listening to her movements the other side of the wall, the gentle sighing and creaking of bed springs, he plots his movements towards an idyllic future. A future that doesn’t feature the ex-girlfriend who still lives in his other house, or his dead wife. As Mark ingratiates himself, Freya – lost in a sea of grief – only slowly begins to realise that Mark’s motives may not be quite as compassionate as they seem and her eyes are opened to the threat she has guilelessly invited into her home.


Whatever I can do for Freya, I’ll gladly and honourably do, he told himself, grateful for the calm intentness of his spirit. She schooled him. She made him a better person. There was an overarching...


Advance Praise

"…magnificent…the characters are so alive, intense" Menna Elfyn

"Davies talent is in her excavation of the tumultuous, contradictory, human soul. ‘Your pen unearthed truths you hardly knew you knew…' she writes. ‘There are memories that cannot permit themselves to be remembered. They are caught in an internal wall-space.' The Party Wall takes us into those hidden places – in a powerful, remarkable novel." Anne Lauppe-Dunbar

"acute and sensitive insight into human nature on the edge... You take the reader into places of the mind one’s not visited before." Lyndall Gordon

"Stevie Davies is a diamond among writers and 'The Party Wall' scintillates with her brilliance. This anatomy of malevolence and redemption is a masterpiece. Davies is at her most terrifyingly incisive as she peels back the skin of civilisation to reveal the secret impulses and embarrassments, torments and pain that lie just beneath the surface, just through the wall - where an attentive neighbour can be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

'The Party Wall' is especially unnerving in a time when we’re all inescapably battened down with our neighbours. A perfect lockdown read!" Julie Bertagna

"…magnificent…the characters are so alive, intense" Menna Elfyn

"Davies talent is in her excavation of the tumultuous, contradictory, human soul. ‘Your pen unearthed truths you hardly knew you knew…'...


Available Editions

EDITION Mass Market Paperback
ISBN 9781912905157
PRICE £8.99 (GBP)

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Average rating from 23 members


Featured Reviews

I really enjoyed this book and will give it a huge thumbs up. With a great story line and excellent main characters - I would highly recommend this book.

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I'm not really sure why, but it took me a long time to get into this book. The writing is wonderful and measured but the start seemed too slow. However, I'm so pleased I persevered as it is a book in which the tension is racked up very slowly to the point where, if it was on television, I would be watching the end from behind the settee! Thank you to netgalley and Honno Press for an advance copy of this book

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The Party Wall has you hooked right from the first few chapters. Mark and Freya are neighbours. Feya loses her husband Keir and Mark slowly begins to infiltrate her life.
He begins by listening to her grief through their adjoining house walls and then from Keir's funeral he begins to seep into every aspect of her life.
But Mark is not all he seems - extremely intelligent - he has a dark past that is bursting to escape - what happened to his first wife, why is there someone still living in his marital home and why is he living next door to Freya?
Full of twists, turns and suspense, The Party Wall is a gripping read.

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Beautiful, dark and twisted. This book truly caught me off guard and kept me on edge so often. What a wonderful reminder that you never quite know what’s going on under the surface of someone, and to be careful who you trust, even when it’s someone you’re literally very close to.

Mark is madly (a very apt word) in love with his recently-widowed neighbour, Freya. Obsession and delusion are major themes in this story, but so are themes of grief and healing. It’s so deliciously creepy and chilling, perversion has never been so addictive to devour.

The story slowly unravels with past and future slotting perfectly into place with each chapter. It kept me hooked completely, was wonderfully paced and the characters so deep and recognisable .

My absolute favourite thing though has to be the writing style. I learned so much from Mark’s eccentric reading habits and cultural knowledge, in fact I made more highlights in this book than in any I’ve read over the past 2 years! I also lowkey love how much the author clearly favours dogs over cats.

Favourite quote:

She had opened apertures in his darkness and shone the light of her understanding through them.

I highly recommend this book if you’re looking for something dark, gripping, unusual and beautifully written. The Party Wall will be released on 17th September, thank you to Honno Modern Fiction for the arc.

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I greatly enjoyed this book, thank you for giving me a preview copy. The plot was interesting and fast paced and I sympathised with the characters. This is the first novel I have read by this author but I hope it will not be the last!

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This novel is a study in the vulnerability of grief. That time after a death when we are still shell-shocked and so lost, we don’t even know how lost we are. Mark lives next door to Freya, and when her husband dies suddenly he decides to help her in whatever way he can. It starts in small ways such as offering to walk the dog or inviting her to get outside a little. These small kindnesses are appreciated by Freya who is very vulnerable, There is a slow, creeping sense of something not quite right in these offers of help. Mark’s frustration at the neighbours from the opposite side and Freya’s brother-in-law, for also helping her out, feel slightly possessive. He perceives them as getting in the way or butting in. Mark believes he is doing the honourable thing, but slowly the reader starts to see a different intent.

Mark can hear Freya through their party wall and as he listens to her turning and settling in bed from the other side it becomes voyeuristic. He can’t see anything but he can hear her every sound. It’s an intimacy she doesn’t realise he’s enjoying. Mark has a lot of secrets though. He begins to plot a new future with Freya, one that doesn’t include his ex-girlfriend who still lives in another flat or his wife, who is dead. There is a brilliant tension built between the intentions the reader can see, but that Freya is completely blind to due to grief. Only by very slow degrees does she start to notice that Mark’s motives may not be purely altruistic. But now she’s let him into her life and is just starting to comprehend the threat he poses. The pace is a little slow, but perhaps that’s deliberate to draw out the tension. For someone like me who has experienced coercive control, it can be very difficult to see at first and I think the subject was handled well by the writer and with the seriousness it deserves. I found myself quite unsettled by Mark and I think it would make any reader think about the relationships they’ve had and wonder. Tense, dark and almost forensic in its detail and intensity.

I loved the tension, and Mark’s quest for perfection was truly chilling. Each woman has been set on a pedestal, as the perfect consort for someone like him. His narcissism leads him to control everything around him so he wants the perfect home, the perfect life and the perfect woman. What happens when they don’t measure up?

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