Benbecula - by Graeme MacRae Burnet (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Booker-nominated Graeme Macrae Burnet returns to the historic Scotland of His Bloody Project to tell the multi-layered story of madness and murder in the MacPhee family.

During the summer of 1857 on the distant Scottish Island of Benbecula, Angus MacPhee, returning from a fortnight's work at a house a few miles away, seems to have lost his mind, forcing his family to keep him shackled to his bed. When he is finally allowed to go at large, his erratic behaviour leads to the conviction that he should be committed to an asylum.

Five years later, Malcolm MacPhee is living alone in the house where his brother's madness led to horrifying ends. Isolated, ostracised by his small community, Malcolm is haunted, the stench of his brother's crimes lingering as the reek cleaves to the thatch. Is he afflicted by the same madness? And to where has his sister Marion disappeared?

Drawing on letters, asylum records, and witness statements, Graeme Macrae Burnet returns to the historic Scotland of His Bloody Project to construct a beguilingly layered narrative about madness, murder, and the uncertain nature of the self.

Review Quotes

Praise for Benbecula

"The novel's devilish appeal lies in the intoxicated and isolated Malcolm's narration from within the confines of his family's 'skullhouse, ' where he muses about his own morality . . . The author once again proves his mastery of moody psychological thrillers."
--Publishers Weekly

"Elegant, eerie . . . Perhaps the most impressive feature of the novella is the sense of simmering. The bare facts are not really in dispute, but the reasons and motives are deliberately opaque. Rather than any explicit cause, Macrae Burnet conjures an atmosphere of suppression."
--Stuart Kelly, The Scotsman

"Burnet's writing is wonderful, as always, and diving deeply into complex characters is one of his great strengths . . . [Benbecula] has all the same depth and integrity of characterisation that has become a hallmark of Burnet's work. Highly recommended."
--FictionFan

Praise for Graeme Macrae Burnet

"You can gulp down A Case of Matricide in one sitting, as the prose style seems to demand. But linger over Burnet's novel, and its real pleasures emerge."
--Sarah Weinman, New York Times

"Case Study has a lot in common with the novels of Vladimir Nabokov and Roberto Bolaño, in which invented characters pass through tumultuous episodes of literary history that never quite happened, though it seems as if they should have . . . A diverting novel, overflowing with clever plays on and inversions of tropes of English intellectual and social life during the postwar decades."
--Christian Lorentzen, New York Times

"A mystery story--or is it?--that takes us into the heart of the psychoanalytical consulting room. Or does it? Interleaving a biography of radical '60s 'untherapist' Collins Braithwaite with the notebooks of his patient 'Rebecca, ' a young woman seeking answers about the death of her sister, 'GMB' presents a forensic, elusive and mordantly funny text(s) layered with questions about authenticity and the self."
--2022 Booker Prize Judges

"A stylish, atmospheric mystery with a startling twist . . . [The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau] satisfies like Simenon and surprises like Ruth Rendell. I can't give it any higher praise."
--NPR

"A remarkable crime trilogy of doublings and disappearance . . . These are crime novels in which identities are unstable, evidence is slippery and solutions are obscure."
--Nicholas Clee, Times Literary Supplement

"Burnet propels readers through [Case Study] with his fierce, hilarious intelligence."
--Crime Reads

About the Author

Graeme Macrae Burnet was born in Kilmarnock, Scotland, and now lives in Glasgow. His Bloody Project, his second novel, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016, won the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year Award 2016, and was shortlisted for the LA Times Book Awards 2017. His fourth novel, Case Study, was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2022 and was included in the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2022.