Who is the author of this meta-text, what is it about, when was it first printed, where did it come from, and why is it so important to the novel at hand? And how exactly do the novel's three main characters - Vienna, Kala, and Peter - regard The Unclad Spirit? What does this text mean, or else come to mean, to each of them?Ģ. Discuss The Unclad Spirit, the 'book within the book' of Howard Norman's novel. In the months that follow, shuttling between Viennas makeshift darkroom and Kala Muries bed, Peter is drawn more and more deeply to Kala, as he comes to share her obsession with “spirit pictures,” photographs in which the faces of the dead, deeply missed or altogether forgotten, mysteriously appear during the process of development.ġ. Radin Heur - theirs is a macabre duet of violence and art.Īfter a strenuous journey, Peter arrives in Churchill on the very night of his employers wedding - only to be seduced by Viennas brilliant and beautiful new wife, Kala Murie.

Across Canada, Linn has been arranging and photographing “gruesome accidents” for the private collection, in London, of a Mr. When young Peter Duvett accepts a job as an assistant to the esteemed portraitist Vienna Linn, in the remote town of Churchill, Manitoba, his life changes in more ways than he could possibly have imagined.

The final book in Howard Normans Canadian trilogy is a tremendous accomplishment: a novel about spirit photographs, adultery and greed that moves from Halifax to the Far North and back again.

The Haunting of L by Howard Norman