The Devil's Footprints: A Novel (Hardcover)

In Burnside's first novel since his acclaimed memoir A Lie About My Father, random acts of cruelty unearth a town's dark secrets. In the charged, superstitious Scottish village of Coldhaven, it's a year after 32-year-old Moira Birnie has killed herself and her two sons-but spared her 14-year-old daughter, Hazel. Like many in town, photographer's son Michael Gardiner, who narrates, has heard the story: a heavily drinking Moira thought her abusive husband was the devil when she drugged her sons and set her car on fire. The deaths remind Michael of his youthful, class-crossed affair with Moira, as well as his encounters with her bullying brother, Malcolm. With his own marriage crumbling and his sanity in doubt, Michael obsesses about Hazel, who he thinks may be his daughter, and the confrontation that ensues between the two changes them both. The plot doesn't hold together, but Burnside creates an intense, Stephen King-like atmosphere around Michael's observations and memories, and the complex cast's secrets and grudges. (Jan.)
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“John Burnside’s elegant prose combines a pulse of accumulating menace reminiscent of Ian McEwan with an unflinching apprehension of nature’s serene indifference that evokes J. M. Coetzee. There’s a timelessness here that will make the reader put down the book and peek out the window at the neighbors. God knows what they’re up to on a cold winter’s night.”
–Valerie Martin

"[S]tunning: majestically written, with a piercing intelligence and a razor-sharp sense of the human predicament…. [T]he harrowing psychological investigation…is told seemingly without effort, through words that intoxicate, scenes that enrapture, and ideas that ensnare. Mr. Burnside has said that he hoped to explore notions of evil, grief, and love. He succeeds; The Devil’s Footprints is a remarkable marriage of thought to form…. [A]n intricate story, imbued with an intense moral relativity.”
–The New York Sun

"Burnside creates an intense, Stephen King-like atmosphere around Michael's observations and memories, and the complex cast's secrets and grudges."
–Publishers Weekly

“The best novels, while entertaining, offer the promise of teaching something crucial, ineffable about life and how to live it. We read them to survive. The Devil’s Footprints partakes of that quality…. Burnside is a luminous writer and a muscular thinker.”
–Los Angeles Times

“The perfidy of the characters contrasted with the breathtaking calm and scenic beauty of the landscape are evoked with great skill. Burnside is an acclaimed poet and indeed, his prose shimmers with the silence that resides at the center of all poetry.”
–Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Burnside weaves the personal trauma of Michael's realization with the folkloric strand of Coldhaven's dark history to tease out the legend behind the devil's footprints. The perfidy of the people contrasted with the calm beauty of the landscape is evoked with great skill.”
–St. Petersburg Times

"Burnside wrestles with hugeness in a way that few writers dare to…convincingly gracious and profoundly necessary."
–Ali Smith

"A remarkable author. . ."
–A.L. Kennedy

"A master of language. . ."
–Hilary Mantel

“A spare, bewitching, beautifully written book…Burnside nimbly delineates the border where the actual and illusory meet: on both sides he finds dark and flinty human truths.”
–The Times

“Burnside has written a haunting tale of crime and absolution; belonging and alienation; guilt and grief. Both this novel and [his poetry] are superb achievements. To be both a poet and novelist is highly unusual. To write so outstandingly well in both genres is a rarity indeed.”
–Financial Times

“The Devil’s Footprints is a classic tale with an old-fashioned, gripping plot. But it is also helplessly good at the things that Burnside loves best: geography, the neighbours, the way people’s lives go, and the way people’s other, secret lives turn out.”
–Guardian