Book description
'Christopher's house stood out on its cliff like stages of lunar
madness. It was the night of the first storm, not of winter, but of
that week before winter which is the last warning to all creatures to
dig themselves in...' Christopher Barocco is a self-made man of
considerable means who decrees the building of a house in his image,
to be carved out of a wild and treacherous Californian hillside in the
Sierra Nevada valleys. However, as those who are drawn into his grand
design soon discover, Barocco is also a man with a shadowy past; and
the house is not destined to be a place where he will find peace but,
rather, a catalyst for passion, violence, and death. First published
in 1956, The Self-Enchanted was David Stacton's third novel. 'A Gothic
extravaganza... [Stacton] seems to participate with so much fervour in
the fantasies he describes.' Times Literary Supplement
