Verity Holloway's poetic eye is superlative in conjuring up sharp images; it is as if you can feel the splinters in Aisling's fingers and the sharp detritous under her bare feet. With its gorgeous gothic cover and in the way the narrative evokes a sense of place while dancing along the line of dreams and reality, Holloway is a writer to watch.
Starbust
The debut novel from Verity Holloway, Pseudotooth is an adult take on `portal fantasy', boldly tackling issues of trauma responses, social difference and our conflicting desires for purity and acceptance.

Aisling Selkirk is a young woman beset by unexplained blackouts, pseudo-seizures that have baffled both the doctors and her family. Sent to recuperate in the Suffolk countryside with ageing relatives, she seeks solace in the work of William Blake and writing her journal, filling its pages with her visions of Feodor, a fiery East Londoner haunted by his family's history back in Russia.

But her blackouts persist as she discovers a Tudor priest hole and papers from its disturbed former inhabitant Soon after, she meets the enigmatic Chase, and is drawn to an unfamiliar town where the rule of Our Friend is absolute and those deemed unfit and undesirable disappear into The Quiet...

Blurring the lines between dream, fiction and reality, Pseudotooth boldly tackles issues of trauma, social difference and our conflicting desires for purity and acceptance, asking questions about those who society shuns, and why.