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Joanne Harris’s second novel, Sleep Pale Sister, was originally published before she made her name with Chocolat and all the other bestsellers that now place her in the pile nearest the door with every new novel she publishes.

In her foreword to the new edition, published by Black Swan in 2004, she writes, "It takes a certain kind of person to want to raise the dead." This opening statement is delightfully ambiguous, as that is exactly what the novel does. The novel that never made it to the bestseller list lives again and, in it, the dead are raised in a gothic horror setting.

Henry Chester, an ageing artist, is compulsively obsessed with the purity of his model. He marries Effie and reduces her to a drugged wraith of her former self. However, Effie becomes involved with a self-seeking lover, Mose, and the brothel owner, Fanny. Fanny is seeking revenge for the death of her own daughter, Marta, who was murdered ten years earlier on the night of Chester’s brothel visit.

Through all their voices, we hear the story of Henry Chester’s debauchery, of Mose’s scheming and of the mesmerising possession of Effie by the spirit of Marta. The pace never falters. This is a very different Harris from the one who wrote Gentlemen and Players, Coastliners and Five Quarters of the Orange – but equally enjoyable.

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