"First, you find a little thread, the little thread leads you to a string, and the string leads you to a rope..."
By day, lonely Bartleby Flynn labours as a librarian at the cavernous National Library of Books and Publications. Working late one evening, he happens upon an untitled book for which no record can be found, a book whose unusual content and mysterious origins hold as much fascination for him as any published volume.
A thread of textual clues leads him to the discussion fora of The Correspondent newspaper website; here, "below the line", Flynn encounters a vaudeville cast of half-crazed, anonymous writers, and continues his obsessive quest to track the unknown author down, in an attempt to rescue him from an oblivion deeper than the grave.
Set against a backdrop of social and economic turmoil, under the ever-watchful eye of the Chief Librarian and a ghoulish deputy known as The Lurker, Flynn finds himself taking increasing risks; and as the mystery deepens, he begins to learn the subtle shades of meaning behind the unknown author's favourite proverb, 'in der Nacht sind alle Katzen grau' ('all cats are grey by night').
Deploying a clever variety of textual and meta-fictional tricks and studded with a kaleidoscopic array of discussions about everything from Shakespeare, the nature of onions, to zombie cinema, Thread is a dark and ironic novel of ideas about loneliness, monomania, and the nature of online identity. Composed in musical, surprising prose, it is also a book about books, and a love letter to the ways in which the written word can shape our destinies.
About the Author: A M Gatward is the author of The Tea Elf & Other Stories. He was educated at Oxford, and The University of Chicago. He lives with his cat in Bristol.
