Much-acclaimed novelist and poet Scott’s latest tome is a Gothic and sometimes grotesque psychological tale that takes its time getting going, and then really kicks you in the guts.

After a 1984-set flashback that doesn’t necessarily explain much at all, we then cut to 1987 and follow young and fragile film critic Susan Vaughan to the Mount Macedon home of reclusive French movie director Jean-Jacques Baille, whose wife Anna was mysteriously kidnapped in the introduction. Baille has invited Vaughan (who often writes for Australia’s long-gone film mag Cinema Papers) to his property to conduct a series of interviews that will constitute a book and a documentary, and you can immediately tell that each has several hidden agendas.

Carefully laying out the plot, and stripping back Susan and Jean-Jacques, layer by layer, this can get the tiniest bit wordy, here and there, but there’s no doubt that it’s still a powerful and unsettling tale. And Scott’s characters regularly mention great artists, celebrated authors, and legendary (and now late-great filmmakers) like Michelangelo Antonioni, who made slow-burn, darkly deceptive character studies with plots much like this very book.

But who’s playing who? And can you work it out before someone cries “CUT!”

THE BOY WHO LOVED DOLLS
John A. Scott (Puncher & Wattmann), 201pp
RRP $34.95 (hardback)

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