This immaculately penned gothic thriller from 1978 is an act of homage to James Hogg’s Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner—often cited as one of the first ‘postmodern’ texts and one of the few from Scotland—and romps along with enough interest for fans of cerebral horror or psychological mysteries. Revolving around a somewhat weak revenge plot concerning a pompous laird who booted several squatting sisters from his estate, and the subsequent revenge and supernatural shenanigans of one Jane Wild, The Bad Sister retains its interest through the precise and arresting prose, failing at the level of plot and logic. Framed within an ‘Editor’s Preface,’ the central narrative is a mixture of fantasies, visions, and mental deviations, with characters real or imagined populating the first-person ‘Journal of Jane Wild’ (narrated in an elevated literary style—thus contra to the journal form), and the surreal rush of Tennant’s language keeps the reader agog for the short duration. Decent.
Psychological novel allusing to Hogg's Memoirs and Confessions of a justified sinner. The novel is deeply confusing: characters are cyphers, merge into one another and may or may not even be real. When we get on to Jane's diary time becomes distorted also and we jump seemlessly between the present and the past - showing the confusion of the narator. It also plays with themes of supernatural vs reality. Despite the confusion I did find this very readable and fascinating. Fans of things like Sarah Waters The Littlest Stranger will find this one of interest.
