The Testament of Gideon Mack: A compelling blend of memoir, legend and madness

About this book

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For Gideon Mack, a minister without faith and a husband without certainty, belief has always belonged to stories rather than life. God, the Devil, ghosts and fairies all seem equally implausible. Then one day he falls into a gorge and survives. The figure who rescues him may not be human at all.

What follows is Gideon’s testament, written as an account of his life and its unravelling. Part memoir, part legend, part local history, it traces an inner crisis that leads to disappearance, return and death, though the shape of these events is never entirely secure. The voice that tells the story is measured, persuasive and quietly unsettling, leaving room for doubt at every turn.

This is literary fiction with gothic undertones, attentive to uncertainty and conviction. It asks what belief is made of, how stories take hold, and whether faith begins in truth or in the need to explain what cannot otherwise be borne.