Fog Heart

Bram Stoker Best Novel Award Finalist and International Horror Guild Best Novel Award Winner Two couples, both skeptical and desperate, are drawn together by a medium named Oona, a fragile, beautiful young woman who knows things that no other living person should know. Is her gift real, or is it the sign of a consuming madness? Can she lead them all to important truths, or will they be trapped in the tightening web of terror and death?

Amazon.com Review

"His body flew into hers, his face into hers, a glimpse of an unbearably elongated eye rushing directly into hers. It felt as if she had been hit by a wave of frigid moisture, so shocking to her system that it nearly knocked her out, and at the same moment she could hear him shriek in agony--from within her body, the awful noise filling her, seeming to swell her brain and resound in the chambers of her heart, devastating her with shared pain." A woman is horrified by visits from her dead father. Her cold psychopath of a husband thinks she's being ridiculous. Another husband and wife are getting messages from their long-lost daughter who died as an infant. The two couples consult a medium named Oona--a serious, moody teenager with Pre-Raphaelite hair. Sensing that their fates are intertwined, Oona introduces them and insists on conducting their séances together. Fog Heart is a dark, disturbing ghost story, one in which the living characters' inner torments and relationships with each other are more crucial than the supernatural events. The pacing is a little uneven, but Thomas Tessier--called "horror fiction's best kept secret" by the Washington Post--more than makes up for it with literary craftsmanship. The characters are richly evoked, the dialogue smooth and convincing, and the descriptions elegant, even musical.

From Publishers Weekly

Everyone seems to be chased by the dead in Tessier's (Secret Strangers) eighth novel, already published to critical acclaim in the U.K. In this atmospheric tale, a young Connecticut psychic draws two couples together, dramatically changing their lives and her own. Oona Muir has visionary trances that involve self-laceration, bleeding and fits. Expressing her visions in the disjointed, imagistic language of traditional prophecy, she convinces a few believers but lets more skeptical acquaintances scoff?until she hints at their own dark secrets. Her powers attract a sex-murderer who wants her as his accomplice and, in order to get to Oona, seduces her unwitting guardian half-sister. The other couple, Charley and Jan, are forced into a confrontation with the truth about their deceased infant daughter that has shocking repercussions. It's not easy to write an effective ghost story these days, but Tessier has managed it with literary flair. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In this strongly atmospheric novel, two couples' lives are brought together by Oona, a psychic they have come to because of troubling visions or apparitions. Each couple has been married a long time while harboring horrifying secrets. One couple is haunted by the death of a child long ago, another by the ghost of the wife's father, apparently come back to tell her that her husband is a killer. Oona's cryptic visions set powerful forces in motion, leading to murder and suicide, while yet not liberating Oona from the pain of knowing intimately the sins and sufferings of strangers. This compelling novel overcomes any initial skepticism about psi powers and sucks the reader right in. Oona especially is a fascinating and complex character. All public libraries will want this book.?Marylaine Block, St. Ambrose Univ. Lib., Davenport, IowaCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Charley and Jan are haunted by the death of their daughter. Oliver and Carrie are a successful pair, but the ghost of Carrie's father has started visiting her, trying to deliver a message. The two couples, each obsessed by the dead, are drawn to the mysterious and beguiling Oona, a young woman with psychic powers who might be able to help. But Oona has her own dark past, and no one can be truly sure of her motivations. Even if she can help release the spirits that are surrounding the couples, there is a strong chance that all their lives could be destroyed in the process. Oliver, who is secretly a sadistic murderer and who can't chance having his past revealed, finally ignites this explosive mix. Tessier's prose is both erudite and chilling, and while the story never quite achieves its full potential, Fog Heart is still the stuff nightmares are made of. Eric Robbins

From Kirkus Reviews

Easily Tessier's best novel yet (Secret Strangers, 1993, etc.), a restrained account of a girl/woman with a wild talent for seeing into the beyond. Oliver, a fabric salesman and rare-stamp collector, and his wife, Carrie, have a problem: Carrie keeps having brief visions of her long-dead father sitting naked in the kitchen or elsewhere and trying to say something to her that seems to begin with ``Oliver.'' Charley, an academic specializing in Lord Dunsany, and Jan also have a problem: They're beleaguered by guilty memories of their daughter Fiona, who died in her crib during a housefire that started in the nursery. The two women, who have never met, become intensely preoccupied by their outr feelings, although both husbands are essentially disbelievers in the spirit world. When the two couples hear of an outstanding young psychic up in Westport, Connecticut, each make appointments with her. Oona, the young psychic, and Roz, whom she introduces as her half-sister, give compelling performances for each couple, persuading the women that their visions and fears are genuine, though the husbands remain skeptics. In fact, neither husband is quite what he seems at first. Both are adulterers. Oliver, for instance, is involved in some particularly shady business and, as the story progresses, he spends more and more time in Europe, firming up a new cloth he and a kinky German woman inventor/dominatrix are about to put on the market. At last, Oona invites both couples to visit her at the same time, which, she says, will increase the voltage of her performance--and it does, with deadly if appropriate results. Strong dialogue and a refusal to rely on bizarre occurrences to move the story along lend distinction to what might otherwise be a run-of-the-morgue horror novel. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Thomas Tessier is the author of seven previous novels, including Phantom (a finalist for the World Fantasy Award) and Rapture. A resident of London for many years, he now lives in Connecticut.

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