Night Film: Marisha Pessl

This month’s smartest (and creepiest) new novel is a hell of a read . . . An intensely writerly project that doesn’t jettison the reader . . . It explores how stories seep from texts into the world; not only in that it follows a journalist investigating a cult horror-film director whose life is entangled in his fictions, but also because the pages are peppered with fake news article and websites. A narrative signifying narratives, this novel echoes . . . The action bullet-trains through an artfully plotted world of secret screenings and suspicious deaths. ― GQ (Book of the Month)

Night Film, the gorgeously written, spellbinding new novel by the dazzlingly inventive Marisha Pessl, will hold you in suspense until you turn the final page. ― Stylist

When Cordova’s beautiful daughter is found dead in a warehouse, McGrath can’t help but pick up the trail. His pacy narrative voice is interrupted by magazine interviews, text messages, Facebook pages; a Cordova fan forum even pops up on the printed page . . . The result is multiple narratives that read like real life (or a more exciting version of it) . . . Night Film doesn’t cease to be with its last full stop. [Pessl] has developed a phone app and a website with extra material – a savvy move. ― Vogue

The real and the imaginary, life and art, are dizzyingly distorted not only in a Cordova night film – which a fictional Time article calls “a spellbinding and emotionally harrowing experience” – but in Pessl’s own Night Film as well. McGrath’s prologue opens with a dictum “Everyone has a Cordova story, whether they like it or not.” This book is ours. ― Vanity Fair

Night Film is like a head-long fall into a dangerous film set, with the kind of eeriness that makes you jump at your own shadow. ― Marie Claire

Using mixed media, Pessl tell the tale of an eccentric, Kubrick-like film director and the mysterious deaths that litter his past. ― Grazia

Night Film is rich with arcane detail that ranges from obscure Hollywood history to the uses of occult herbs. It is also cleverly illustrated with plausible-looking articles about Cordova and his associates from Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone and Wikipedia… this sprawling, generous, high-octane book remains as entertaining as a late night showing of a horror classic. ― Sunday Times

Intensely gripping . . . an entertaining read in the same league as Gone Girl ― The Times

Beautifully imagined, beautifully written, and hypnotically suspenseful. — Lee Child, author of A WANTED MAN