Review of LOST SOULS by Anne Francis Scott-
“Yes, I believe in ghosts, because I’ve seen them, heard
them and have shared a house with them.”
This is
author Anne Francis Scott's words about her own life. I, as a
reader and a writer, see a mirror image of myself in her
revelation. Scott’s book Lost Souls transported me back
to my younger years. I grew up in an overly paranormal region of the
world with frequent appearances of women in white robes by midnight highways,
weird nocturnal noises in long-abandoned tea estate bungalows, old and gloomy
patches of villages with unsolved mysteries, witchcraft and black magic
ravaging the countryside even today. Some of them have found their
rightful places in my next novel.
In Lost Souls, the narrator’s perspective
gives the prose a mysterious power, producing shudders in the reader, not as
often as one would expect, but “quite often.” The author depicts through
her writing the real threats that our souls vividly experience and react to.
This is not a tale of a woman’s everyday madness. It is much
deeper.
“...In the clearing bordered by tall pines, fading daylight
brushed a soft glow over two crossing ribbons of path. Straight ahead, a giant
oak stood like a bastion. A canopy of hardy, bright gold leaves still clung to
its branches...”
Anne Francis Scott, at times, writes deliberately frightening
prose. There is, however, humor and beautiful descriptive prose
in her writing, sometimes straining a reader’s patience, yet always
remaining engaging. The author manages to locate her characters’ terrors in
their anguished consciousnesses. Yes, her harmonious writing style generates a
sort of real-world unease.
For the most part, the main character’s place in the
paranormal world has been well-portrayed. What provokes a crisis in Toni
Harper, the protagonist, is not as immediately evident as the cause that
instigates her journey. But Toni is someone who will not quit. She is
relentless and therefore adorable.
Lost Souls held my undivided attention
to figure out a crime where the “giant oak” holds something of scenic
Tennessee in its forks of secrecy. Is this story a social commentary of
friendship and bonding too? Sorry, but you will have to wait until not-the-end
to find out how it takes us through amazingly extrasensory perceptions of
psychic forces and more. This story will arguably go down as a tale of danger,
mystery, darkness and beauty in the city of Tennessee.
Sidd Burth
17 September, 2018
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