Completely Novel and The Lighthouse Keeper by Alan Baker

Completelynovel.com, which went live to the public on January 27th, is going to add a new twist to the new book trade. If BookRabbit was a cross between Amazon and Facebook then CompletelyNovel is a cross between BookRabbit and Lulu: it combines book buying, social networking, and self-publishing. The self-publishing is in a much more attractive format than Lulu.

Like all these things you join and set up a profile. You can then add books to your library, write review of give marks out of 5 via a star system. You can also read reviews and join in discussions. Most mainstream novels are available to buy via Amazon links on the site which make following up goodies you've spotted very easy.

What is different about CompletelyNovel is that there is free fiction content too. Where ever you see the logo of a rather demented looking redhaired badger you can read the complete text for free. These are the self-published works. So what is in it for the authors? Well apart from obvious things like getting reviews, publicity and feedback whilst trying to get a conventional publishing deal, Compeltelynovel also makes it possible for readers to buy physical copies. So you start reading something, get to page 20 and think, yep, this is my cup of tea, and click and buy, and courtesy of digital print on demand a copy will wing its way to you from the printer. The author sets the price, and keeps the profits once the printer has been paid.

The use of free material seems to be on the increase. Within the last month Emma Barnes at Snowbooks announced that they would be making proof copies available via Lulu and even bound copies of their AIs. Scott Pack has also mentioned that The Friday Project hope to make some material free online sooon, though whether that will be the whole text of a work like at CompletelyNovel is not yet clear.

So what is on CompletelyNovel? Well there aren't huge numbers of free to read books on there at the moment as they have only been going five minutes, but I had a browse about and popped a few into my library with the intention of reading a few pages and giving you an idea of what the quality appeared to be like on there. Then I  started Alan Baker's The Lighthouse Keeper. I began Friday evening and kept interupting my accounts to finish the work on Saturday. All 215 pages online - yuk. Bad neck this morning, but with his supernatural thriller Alan Baker has hit the page turning button, and I couldn't leave it alone.

Set across December and January 1900/1901 and with a parallel contemporary narrative thread too, 'The Lighthouse Keeper' begins with the true story of the mysterious disappearance of three keepers from their posting on the Flannan Isles, one of the most remote parts of the UK. The parallel stories continue as we follow the experieinces and the discoveries of thre relief lighthouse kepers sent out after the disappearance in 1900 and the modern day scientists on the island. The events in each story are an echo of the other, and the reader wants to race to the end (as I did!) to discover whether any of the characters, in either chronology, escape and how.

Baker builds up the interest, atmosphere and suspence from the first pages. The book has a strong sense of place, and of time, and uses these beautifully to build the ghostly atmsophere. His prose is very neat and tidy just like a spic and span Victorian lighthouse, or the thought processes of the modern scientists, and as such is perfect for the job in hand. Nothing is overplayed en route to the end in his orderly sentences; and of course the hysteria should be the reader's and the protganists,' not the narrator's, so this just as it should be.

Part supernatural thriller, part convincing historical fiction and part science-fiction it is scary in the fun way of classics such as The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Woman in Black. But like The Mysteries of Udolpho the ending is a little disappointing, but in a sense that is a tribute to the strength of the build-up. The prose is so tight and the emotional build-up so strong that nothing, however bizarre, in this world, the next world or a parallel world, could be suficiently bizzare to be truly satisfying. This is a tiny quibble; The Lighthouse Keeper is a hugely enjoyable read. If this is the callibre of the fiction available CompletelyNovel may well be onto something.

Comments

[Simon S]

I am going to give this site a whirl after the weekend and I am also going to try The Lighthouse Keeper as it looks like it might make me find reading online more do-able. The while e-reader thing I find quite objectionable at the moment ha, I might be converted, doubtful but maybe.

[Juxtabook]

I have to say that reading the novel online was the worst bit. I guess having the free content is more useful if you want to get a flavour of an unknown author's work before spalshing out on a purchase.