The ramifications of this incident take over Tim and Abi’s lives; eventually they’re separated and sent to different schools. Maclean’s debut novel is an extremely accomplished piece of writing, and his ability to conjure his settings – from grimy suburban housing estates to M. The moral of “The Apparition Phase” asks the reader to question what is real or what is invented when the mind is tricked and is there even a difference between them?

The Apparition Phase by Will Maclean | Waterstones

I found Tim a charming but naϊve narrator, particularly in the latter half of the book; Maclean offers a painstaking portrayal of how the loss of Abi, and Tim’s consequent desperation to believe there’s something on the other side, has caused his arrested emotional development. I just couldn't appreciate and enjoy it while reading because I so much wanted to read the rest of the before told story. But more importantly, readers really responded to it, and a bunch of them have started putting together the words. Maclean manages to imbue the whole concept with its rightful sense of dread and foreboding: it’s somehow worse to be the target of a malevolent entity which is entirely of your own invention. So it was a bit disorientating to be yanked from all that sublime scene-setting into Part II, which, it turns out, sets the tone for everything else.Set in the 1970's this novel begins with precocious and insular twins, Tim and Abigail, who are obsessed with the supernatural. And so the first thing my twin sister and I did, when we finally got access to a camera of our own, was fake a ghost photograph. The middle ground of the book with the seances proved to be a little repetitive and after a while wasnt as eerie as it first made me feel in the first few instances.

The Apparition Phase - Wikipedia

I can't wait to read more by him because this really was a promising debut and I couldn't put it down. I spoke to lots of estate agents, and they all had creepy stories about houses they’d tried to let, so that was a good starting point… but it really wasn’t firing on all cylinders. I saw a terrific thing as well – you’ve signed 1000 copies, and written on each a word that, when they’re all put together, comprise a 1000-word short story! There were some really strange and spooky events during the seances, (held of course in an old, dark, and creepy country house), and a heart pounding scene towards the end that left me breathless, not to mention terrified!That her former lover’s ghost finds her in the “worse armes” of another man also points to her promiscuity.