Cover

Landing Page

MARCEL THEROUX

The
SECRET BOOKS

Epigraph

This hour I tell things in confidence,

I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.

WALT WHITMAN, ‘Song of Myself’,
from Leaves of Grass

Contents

1. Title Page
2. Epigraph
3. 1: LOST BOY
4. 2: THE SAVIOUR ON BLOOD
5. 3: THE SECRET BOOKS
6. 4: CONVOY SIXTY-EIGHT
7. Afterword
8. About the Author
9. Also by the Author
10. Copyright

1: LOST BOY

WEARYING OF THE TRICKERY of arresting opening sentences – their flavours of honey and brimstone, their glimpses of drama to come, their syntax weighted to draw you to the full stop and beyond – all I can honestly say is: reader, come with me.

I’ve never been a fan of epigraphs in books; there’s something arch and writerly about them, like a cupped chin or an ostentatious scarf in an author photo. They’re a cut-price way of giving both of us a literary feeling – instead of flowers, a burst of ersatz laurel from a can of air freshener. Psssht. Mmm, is that … Whitman? But I chose that fragment of Leaves of Grass as a kind of promissory note, as a token of good faith between us. It says: let us be equal partners, let us be the sort of friends who share secrets. Is there flattery here? Perhaps a little; friends must be inclined to think well of each other.

My friend – and I’m aware of sounding overfamiliar in my eagerness to assure you of my good intentions – in order to save you time and money, I’m going to put the argument of this book on its opening page: the world we inhabit is only a story we tell, and neither the truest nor the best.

The wisdom of the conventional metaphors says that stories resemble bridges, gifts and medicine; they join, they are bestowed, they heal. But stories are less pure and less benign than these images suggest. Human beings are compulsive makers and believers of stories. And stories can be many things – banners round which a mob will rally; masks to signify enemies; blades even, to cut, and sever, and kill. If novels are good for anything, which I occasionally doubt, perhaps it’s for revealing how stories arise, where they end, and when to stop believing.

Still listening, camerado?