The Visitors - Softcover

SIMON SYLVESTER is a writer, teacher, and occasional filmmaker. After working as a camera assistant and journalist, he began writing fiction, and his short sotries are published regularly in literary journals. He lives in Cumbria with his partner and their daughter.

“The Visitors offers a moody, beguiling, absorbing take on the myth of the selkie, one that asks what the attention these creatures offer their human suitors truly demonstrates: a bottomless love or a heartless caprice? In Simon Sylvester's hands, the mysteries of character are every bit as enticing as the mysteries of abduction and violence, and every bit as unpredictable.” 
—Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of the Dead

“In The Visitors, Simon Sylvester has created both a world where I want to live—the island of Bancree, off the west coast of Scotland—and a seventeen-year-old heroine named Flora, whom I would follow anywhere. With marvelous skill he weaves together the legends of the selkies and his modern, murderous plot. The result is a novel of dazzling pleasure and deep suspense.” 
—Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy

“It’s an astonishingly assured debut, fit to put the fear of the deep dark sea into other authors, be they old hands at the shennachie profession or first-timers like Sylvester himself.”
—Tor.com

“Beguiling, unputdownable.”
—The Globe and Mail

“The type of novel you miss after putting it down, like an old friend gone away from your life. Don't be surprised if Sylvester gets as big as Gaiman or Joyce, as he most certainly has the mettle to do so.”
—LitReactor

“Fantastic descriptions of island life, of the diesel-spluttering ferry that forms Bancree’s tenuous connection with the rest of the world and of the moods of the sea around it. Lovely... Sylvester has a gift for storytelling.”
—Sam Jordison, The Guardian (UK)

“A murderous whodunnit of myth.”
—Glasgow Sunday Mail (UK)

“Sylvester’s nicely done first novel is an invitation to imagination as it explores the ambiguous intersection of fantasy and reality."
—Booklist

“A meditation on place, history, and progress... The mythic echoes are allowed to resonate, making the reader question the line between story and truth. Successfully explores the power of stories and storytelling across place and time."
—Kirkus Reviews