I Am Dust by Louise Beech

I'm absolutely delighted that we've reached my stop on the blog tour for the beautiful and haunting I Am Dust by the lovely Louise Beech. Huge thanks to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part and to Karen Sullivan at Orenda Books for my review copy. I also have a copy I bought at the Orenda Roadshow in Glasgow.

The Blurb:

When iconic musical Dust is revived twenty years after the leading actress was murdered in her dressing room, a series of eerie events haunts the new cast…

The Dean Wilson Theatre is believed  to be haunted  by a long-dead actress, singing her last song, waiting for her final cue, looking for her killer…

Now Dust, the iconic musical, is returning after twenty years. But who will be brave enough  to take on  the role of ghostly goddess Esme Black, last played by Morgan  Miller, who was murdered  in her dressing room?

Theatre usher Chloe Dee is caught up  in the spectacle. As the new actors arrive, including an unexpected face from her past, everything changes. Are the eerie sounds and sightings backstage real or just her imagination? Is someone playing games?

Not all the drama takes place onstage. Sometimes murder, magic, obsession and  the biggest of betrayals are real life. When you’re in the theatre shadows, you see everything.

And  Chloe has been  watching…

I Am Dust was published by Orenda Books as an eBook on 16th February 2020 and will be released in paperback on 16th April 2020. It is available to purchase from the publisher and Hive and for purchase or pre order (depending on format) from Amazon. It's also worth checking if your usual independent bookseller can take orders. Many can, and they could really do with our support just at the moment.


My Review:

This is only the second Louise Beech book I've read - don't judge me, I'm on it - but I loved Call Me Star Girl. But I knew that all Louise's books are very different, so I wondered what treats awaited me with this one.

Dust the Musical is coming back to the Dean Wilson Theatre 20 years after its first brief run. Brief, because star Morgan Miller was murdered on the fourth night.

Chloe was ten when she saw Dust with her mum and was mesmerised by it. Loved it and memorised all the songs. Six years later she's part of a youth theatre group meeting in an old church along with friends Jess and Ryan. Ryan suggests they play a game. With a Ouija board. It's a game that will change all their lives. In the present day, Chloe is an usher at the Dean Wilson Theatre and excited for Dust's return. But also fearful. She's begun to see and hear things she can't explain, but they fill her with unease.

Written in a dual timeline, we join Chloe as she begins to remember snippets from 2005 - her friends, rehearsing Macbeth, playing the game, while in 2019 she and the theatre prepare for its biggest show in 20 years and Chloe is struggling to explain some of the things she sees and feels.

Chloe. Oh, Chloe. My heart ached for her. She is exquisitely written. I felt her longing, her pain, her fear and her anger. There is such a delicate vulnerability about her that's just beautiful. There is such depth to her character and I loved that we were on the journey with her as she slowly put the pieces together from both the past and present until the puzzle was complete.

Both the church where the youth theatre group meet and the Dean Wilson Theatre itself are additional characters in this story. Both can be spooky and chilly. Full of history, darkness and shadows, I heard every door shut, felt every draft and heard the hiss as candles blew out. But in contrast, I loved seeing the theatre gearing up for the new show, and the staff going about their work. Beech has clearly drawn on her own experience to take us behind the scenes in the theatre and it's brilliant. I enjoyed getting to know the staff and special mention has to go to Chester - he's someone I'd love to go for a drink with because I reckon he'd have a story or two to tell me! And it all reminded me how much I'm missing the theatre in this strange time we find ourselves.

I don't consider myself very open to the idea of ghosts, magic, a sixth sense, second sight, that kind of thing, but this book gave me chills. I'm closing the blinds more firmly, checking the doors are locked and looking behind me frequently! I think this is down to the beautiful writing and the world that Beech builds and the possibilities she presents.

I Am Dust is a beautiful book about love, longing, pain, desire, betrayal, magic and murder. It broke my heart but I adored it.

Oh, and I'm terribly jealous of Chevalier's purple top hat and coat!


The Author:

Louise Beech is an exceptional literary talent, whose debut novel How To Be Brave was a Guardian Readers’ Choice for 2015. Her second book, The Mountain in My Shoe was shortlisted  for Not the Booker Prize. Both of her previous books Maria in the Moon and The Lion Tamer Who Lost  were widely reviewed, critically acclaimed and number-one bestsellers on  Kindle. The Lion Tamer Who Lost was shortlisted for the RNA Most Popular Romantic Novel Award  in  2019. Her short fiction has won the Glass Woman Prize, the Eric  Hoffer Award for Prose, and the  Aesthetica Creative  Works competition, as well as shortlisting for the Bridport Prize twice. Louise lives with her husband on the outskirts of Hull, and loves her job as a Front of House Usher at Hull Truck Theatre, where her first play was performed in 2012.