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• The Girl from Rawblood ( novel) Sourcebooks Landmark (Naperville, IL), 2017

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  Catriona Ward

  Catriona Ward was born in Washington DC and grew up in the US, Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen and Morocco. She studied English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford followed by the UEA Masters in Creative Writing. After living in New York for 4 years where she trained as an actor, she now works for a human rights foundation and lives in London.

  Catriona Ward’s stunning literary debut, Rawblood is a masterful re-imagining of the ghost story, drawing on the tradition of Sarah Waters, Daphne du Maurier and Hilary Mantel. Shortlisted for the Author’s Club Debut Novel of the Year and winner of Best Horror Novel at the British Fantasy Awards, by turns chilling, bleak and tender, Rawblood is a powerful evocation of the horror of loss, and a gothic parable with a devastating, very modern twist. A second novel, Little Eve, will be published by Weidenfeld in 2018.

  ‘The story crosses generations, from Victorian England to World War I, and is told by a number of different voices, going back and forth in time and drawing the reader into their thrall. With a ghostly face at the window, inexplicable events and a sense of menace handing over every page, this is one chilling gothic novel’ Daily Mail

  ‘eerie… a gripping and gruesome story of death, war, mental health, scientific experimentation, opium addiction and ill-fated, fateful love. Chillingly good.’ Daily Express

  ‘From Victorian ghost story to anti-war polemic and back again: I raged, wept and hid under the bed covers. As full of science as it is the supernatural, this is a hauntingly brilliant virtuoso performance.’ – Emma Healey, author of Elizabeth is Missing

  ‘genuinely frightening.. Like the best classic Gothic novels (Dracula, Frankenstein, The Castle of Otranto), Rawblood relies on partially informed narrators telling their own stories… As a meta-examination of the Gothic genre and as a straightforward tale of grisly haunting, Ward’s novel is remarkably successful.’ The Spectator

  ‘an impressively hectic spin on the Gothic tradition’ The Telegraph

  ‘The ghost story is back’ The Guardian

  ‘an extended stalk through the history of the English ghost story.. the pleasures of the ghost story are presented in such abundance, and carried off in such fine style.. savour the allusive gusto..’ Literary Review

  ‘Ward perfectly balances sensory richness with the chills of the uncanny’ Publishers’ Weekly (starred review)

  ‘Beautifully written, in equal parts both terrifying and heart-breaking, Rawblood is a dazzlingly brilliant Gothic masterpiece.’ Sarah Pinborough

  ‘Rawblood is a cleverly interwoven Gothic tale of love and madness. Ward’s atmospheric writing and chilling story drew me in from the first page, and kept me up at night, right through to the disturbing and tragic ending.’ Claire Fuller, author of Our Endless Numbered Days

  ‘Grabs you like a vivid dream and won’t let you go.. A brilliant piece of fiction’ Lovereading

  ‘All the elements of a real chiller.. Had me on the edge of my seat’ Woman and Home

  ‘Gloriously dark and claustrophobic, Rawblood is a haunting gothic novel of intelligence and complexity. It has many echoes of the classics but is entirely its own book’. Essie Fox, author of The Somnambulist

  Agent Name: Sam Copeland

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  ‘Why I Wrote Rawblood’ by Catriona Ward
  Amy Davies - March 4th, 2015

  Rawblood‘I have felt compelled by this story, landscape and these characters for many years. In 1910, Iris Villarca lives at Rawblood, a lonely house in the heart of Dartmoor. The Villarca family are all haunted by her. She comes in the night, white and skeletal, and takes their lives. Iris’s narrative is interwoven with the past, the voices of the dead – Villarcas, taken by her. Each voice, each narrative, is rooted in a particular era of the ghost story – from its birth, springing from the Gothic novel, to the boy-soldier phantoms of World War I.

  Rawblood feels extremely personal to me, for something so apparently removed from my own experience. During my childhood and adolescence my family moved from the US to Kenya, to Madagascar, then to Yemen, Morocco, and back to the US. We returned each summer to a 17th century stone cottage tucked into a valley beneath the swooping heights of Hamel Down, on Dartmoor. The house was surrounded by the little old oak woodlands, heather, hills. After the tropics, Dartmoor was exotic, with its mists and bogs; a bleak, grand landscape. It made its way into my subconscious, as it has done with many other writers. It’s a natural literary home for demonic hounds, ghosts, murder. A fertile breeding ground for the imagination and the perfect setting for dark, solitary acts.

  The cottage was partly built on the foundations of an older Devon longhouse and partly on some that were even older. There is a dwelling marked on that site in the Domesday Book. The walls were solid granite, seven feet thick. The hearth could have comfortably accommodated an ox. In that house I rarely lasted the length of a night in my own bedroom. My sister awoke, most mornings, to find me curled up on her floor.

  I was continually troubled by something, or someone, in my room. A malign presence. It didn’t take any recognisable form, but was vaguely rhomboid and spun with colour. It would hover before my face, red and seething. Occasionally this presence would shove me out of bed with a firm hand in the small of my back. An overwhelming intent emanated from it. The dark air was alive with its will, a vast sense of purpose; but no indication of what that purpose might be, or whether I myself was a part of it, or an obstacle to it, or irrelevant.

  This persisted for some six years. I never grew accustomed. Each night, the fear was as paralysing as the first time. Other people who slept in the room disliked the atmosphere, and often complained of cold and discomfort. No one else reported seeing anything. When I was fifteen we sold that house. The presence did not follow us.

  There is a particular, and inimitable calibre of fear that is engendered by the ghost story. I recall my feelings on first reading The Monkey’s Paw by W.W. Jacobs. The tale reaches its climax as a mother and father cower away from a pounding at the front door that they know to be their son, risen from the grave. I was afraid, and suitably thrilled. But most of all I recognised a mode of storytelling which gave expression to the fear I felt in the night. It is fear that reaches past rational thought, evoking horror that cannot be explicitly described, and is more awful for it. Rawblood owes its heritage to the literature of the uncanny: M.R. James, Charles Dickens, Sheridan le Fanu, to Stephen King, Susan Hill, Kelly Link, Hilary Mantel, Shirley Jackson, Jeremy Dyson, and many others.

  What could that purpose have been, that I felt so strongly in the dark? When I started writing Rawblood five years ago I wanted toaddress the question of what ghosts might want. Traditionally there is some revenge to be enacted, some mortal task left undone, some corpse unburied. But perhaps ghosts are driven by something entirely other. Rawblood explores these possibilities. I hope it brings you both enjoyment and fear, a combination which, in the right proportions, is very pleasurable.’

  Rawbloood is now available in hardback and ebook. Start reading it now.

  Rawblood by Catriona Ward Extract

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10/2/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1506985374004 1/2
Print Marked Items
Ward, Catriona. The Girl from Rawblood
Erin Entrada Kelly
Library Journal.
142.2 (Feb. 1, 2017): p77.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text: 
* Ward, Catriona. The Girl from Rawblood. Sourcebooks Landmark. Mar. 2017. 400p. ISBN 9781492637424. pap.
$15.99; ebk. ISBN 9781492637431. F
Ward's textured debut opens in 1910 with young Iris Villarca. "This is how I come to kill my father. It begins like this,"
the 11-year-old girl says, setting a tone of dark overcast that will continue to the last page. Iris lives with her father at
Rawblood, an estate on England's bleak Dartmoor moors with a dark history and unmarked graves. Iris lives by a strict
set of rules that center on a singular focus: do not form any relationships, unless you want yourself--and others--to die.
The last of their line, the Villarcas are trailed by a deadly curse that not only haunts those they love, but sickens any
family member who tries to leave the property. Needless to say, Iris rebels against her father's rules and sets her sights
on hapless farmer Tom Gilmore. Their budding romance unleashes a wonderfully twisted narrative that moves among
time periods and points of view. VERDICT Despite a confused and stilted reading (owing to an overreliance on
sentence fragments) in some of the chapters, Ward's layered and skillfully crafted novel weaves elements of classic
gothic and horror into a remarkable story populated by unforgettable characters, palpable atmosphere, and rich
lyricism. Imagine the darkest and goriest undertones of Edgar Allan Poe, the Brontes, Charles Dickens, and Shirley
Jackson, and you'll have an idea of what Ward offers here. [Winner of Best Horror Novel at the British Fantasy Awards
2016.--Ed.]--Erin Entrada Kelly, Haverford, PA
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Kelly, Erin Entrada. "Ward, Catriona. The Girl from Rawblood." Library Journal, 1 Feb. 2017, p. 77. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479301227&it=r&asid=11d0da89a4bd69b219e2b8c3ae7661eb.
Accessed 2 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A479301227
10/2/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1506985374004 2/2
The Girl from Rawblood
Publishers Weekly.
264.2 (Jan. 9, 2017): p44.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text: 
* The Girl from Rawblood
Catriona Ward. Sourcebooks Landmark, $ 15.99 trade paper (368p) ISBN 978-1-49263742-4
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Born in England in 1899, Iris Villarca, the principal narrator of Ward's superb debut, grows up without human
company, except for Tom Gilmore, a farmer's son with whom she forms a secret bond, and her father, Alonso, the only
other surviving Villarca. She believes that a rare disease necessitates their seclusion at Rawblood, their Dartmoor
estate, but as she matures, Alonso reveals the truth: isolation is the only way to save Iris from a ghostly presence that
destroys the Villarcas when they fall in love, marry, or have children. As WWI begins, Iris violates her father's
interdictions with horrific repercussions for both of them. A flashback to 1881, related by Charles Danforth, a doctor
privy to Alonso's complex past, reveals other horrors. Later, new viewpoints, spanning the years from 1839 to 1919,
focus on the family's women as each negotiates the powerlessness of her situation and time. Sharply evoked particulars-
-Devon's landscape and period medical science emerge with special vividness-help root the spectral phenomena. Wade
perfectly balances sensory richness with the chills of the uncanny. Agent: Sam Copeland, Rogers, Coleridge & White
(U.K.). (Mar.)
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Girl from Rawblood." Publishers Weekly, 9 Jan. 2017, p. 44+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA477339284&it=r&asid=e1dee93d13fd2e2c7c6eda9c220e402d.
Accessed 2 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A47733928410/2/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1506985374004 1/2
Print Marked Items
Ward, Catriona. The Girl from Rawblood
Erin Entrada Kelly
Library Journal.
142.2 (Feb. 1, 2017): p77.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text: 
* Ward, Catriona. The Girl from Rawblood. Sourcebooks Landmark. Mar. 2017. 400p. ISBN 9781492637424. pap.
$15.99; ebk. ISBN 9781492637431. F
Ward's textured debut opens in 1910 with young Iris Villarca. "This is how I come to kill my father. It begins like this,"
the 11-year-old girl says, setting a tone of dark overcast that will continue to the last page. Iris lives with her father at
Rawblood, an estate on England's bleak Dartmoor moors with a dark history and unmarked graves. Iris lives by a strict
set of rules that center on a singular focus: do not form any relationships, unless you want yourself--and others--to die.
The last of their line, the Villarcas are trailed by a deadly curse that not only haunts those they love, but sickens any
family member who tries to leave the property. Needless to say, Iris rebels against her father's rules and sets her sights
on hapless farmer Tom Gilmore. Their budding romance unleashes a wonderfully twisted narrative that moves among
time periods and points of view. VERDICT Despite a confused and stilted reading (owing to an overreliance on
sentence fragments) in some of the chapters, Ward's layered and skillfully crafted novel weaves elements of classic
gothic and horror into a remarkable story populated by unforgettable characters, palpable atmosphere, and rich
lyricism. Imagine the darkest and goriest undertones of Edgar Allan Poe, the Brontes, Charles Dickens, and Shirley
Jackson, and you'll have an idea of what Ward offers here. [Winner of Best Horror Novel at the British Fantasy Awards
2016.--Ed.]--Erin Entrada Kelly, Haverford, PA
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Kelly, Erin Entrada. "Ward, Catriona. The Girl from Rawblood." Library Journal, 1 Feb. 2017, p. 77. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479301227&it=r&asid=11d0da89a4bd69b219e2b8c3ae7661eb.
Accessed 2 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A479301227

---

10/2/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1506985374004 2/2
The Girl from Rawblood
Publishers Weekly.
264.2 (Jan. 9, 2017): p44.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text: 
* The Girl from Rawblood
Catriona Ward. Sourcebooks Landmark, $ 15.99 trade paper (368p) ISBN 978-1-49263742-4
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Born in England in 1899, Iris Villarca, the principal narrator of Ward's superb debut, grows up without human
company, except for Tom Gilmore, a farmer's son with whom she forms a secret bond, and her father, Alonso, the only
other surviving Villarca. She believes that a rare disease necessitates their seclusion at Rawblood, their Dartmoor
estate, but as she matures, Alonso reveals the truth: isolation is the only way to save Iris from a ghostly presence that
destroys the Villarcas when they fall in love, marry, or have children. As WWI begins, Iris violates her father's
interdictions with horrific repercussions for both of them. A flashback to 1881, related by Charles Danforth, a doctor
privy to Alonso's complex past, reveals other horrors. Later, new viewpoints, spanning the years from 1839 to 1919,
focus on the family's women as each negotiates the powerlessness of her situation and time. Sharply evoked particulars-
-Devon's landscape and period medical science emerge with special vividness-help root the spectral phenomena. Wade
perfectly balances sensory richness with the chills of the uncanny. Agent: Sam Copeland, Rogers, Coleridge & White
(U.K.). (Mar.)
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Girl from Rawblood." Publishers Weekly, 9 Jan. 2017, p. 44+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA477339284&it=r&asid=e1dee93d13fd2e2c7c6eda9c220e402d.
Accessed 2 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A477339284

• Intravenous Magazine
  http://www.intravenousmag.co.uk/2015/09/book-review-catriona-ward-rawblood.html
  Word count: 928

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  Book Review: Catriona Ward – 'Rawblood'
  3.9.15 SEAN PALFREY

  CATRIONA WARD
  'Rawblood'
  WEIDENFELD & NICOLSON

  The début novel from Catriona Ward is a trip into bleak gothic horror. Set between two timelines the book focuses on the sad and haunting tale of the cursed Villarcas family through the eyes of the teenage daughter and end of the family bloodline Iris Villacras while intersected by different points of view from the past. It is an excellent example of modern gothic fiction that owes a great deal to books such as 'The Woman In Black', 'Wuthering Heights', 'Frankenstein', and 'The Turn Of The Screw'. It is an enticing plot, heavy on mystery and suspense that urges you to turn the page.

  The book ticks all the right boxes for a gothic horror novel – a strong naïve heroine. A sinister family secret, mad science, forbidden romance, a supernatural presence in an old house within a bleak and isolated, and locals fearful of the noble family. It may be using standard conventions of the genre, however it doesn't come across as derivative or conceited at any point. Instead Ward weaves them into a compelling plot that will genuinely have you guessing and in a few places will shock you.

  The language used throughout feels authentic and avoids falling into the traps of anachronistic phrases and clichés. The characters voices evoke the archetypes of gothic horror – such as the dry and god fearing scientist, Charles Danforth. The passionate and emotional heroine Iris Vilarcas. As well as the tortured Villarcas patriarchs. There is a poetic flow to the prose and it is rich with detailed descriptions that bring small details under the glare of scrutiny and roots the image of Rawood and its inhabitants into your imagination.

  The one major issue with the novel is the pacing. It is heavily descriptive, very accurate in its use of language, and has multiple first-person narratives intersecting throughout the text. And for the most part Ward handles these well and keeps the text interesting. But the shifts in perspective and narratives does regularly derail the momentum being built up in the preceding sections. Ward does always recover but her constant attempts at mixing up the timeline of the story does become a source of frustration despite some genuinely inspired passages.

  On the whole though the novel is well written with wonderful and visceral details with a intense and gripping plot that blurs the line between the supernatural and the psychological in a way that keeps you interested until the end. It is a strong first novel and one that fans of both classic and modern gothic fiction will be able to get into with ease. 'Rawblood' utilises all the expected conventions of the genre but remains an original and compelling read that promises a lot more to come from Catriona Ward in the future.
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• Strange Horizons
  http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/reviews/rawblood-by-catriona-ward/
  Word count: 3040

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  REVIEWS SIZE / / /
  RAWBLOOD BY CATRIONA WARD
  NINA ALLAN
  ISSUE: 30 NOVEMBER 2015
  Rawblood cover
  It is difficult, if not impossible, to assess the potential longevity and eventual worth of a novel in the year, or even the decade, in which it is published. Such judgements, if they are to be made at all, can come only with hindsight. Guessing games can be enjoyable, though, and going by the best of what has been produced so far this century, I feel confident in predicting the survival of horror literature. New trends are emerging, new sensibilities, new novels, and new writers who will eventually be measured alongside the seminal works and writers—Dracula, Jekyll, Frankenstein, Straub, King, Jackson—that have helped to ground and shape the genre in the first place. Caitlin R. Kiernan's The Drowning Girl is one such masterpiece. Helen Oyeyemi's White Is For Witching is another. Now we have Catriona Ward's astounding first novel, Rawblood, which seems equally destined to take its place in the horror canon.

  The story begins simply enough, as most good stories do. The novel opens in the year 1910. Iris Villarca lives alone with her father in a brooding, mansion known as Rawblood, situated in an isolated position on the Princetown side of Dartmoor. Iris’s mother died soon after her birth, supposedly from a disease called Horror autotoxicus, a mysterious ailment that has cut swathes through the Villarca family for generations. To keep his daughter safe from the disease, Iris’s father has instituted a draconian regime of solitude:

  Papa takes a piece of paper from his pocket. He reads it aloud to me, then pins it to my bedroom door:

  1) Other children: not friends.

  2) Servants: not friends.

  3) The disease: a secret.

  4) Papa’s medicine pouch: forbidden. When papa takes medicine: leave room.

  5) Eight o'clock to noon: reading with Papa.

  6) Afternoons: play in the garden. Not out of the garden.

  7) Bed: at seven.

  8) Books: as good as people.

  9) Tell Papa everything.
  (p. 16)
  Iris adores her father, but her strong sense of independence ensures that her love for him does not extend to blind obedience. She secretly becomes friends with Tom Gilmore, the son of a local farmer who has fallen upon hard times. Iris is inclined to dismiss local talk of curses and ghosts as superstitious nonsense, but Tom confesses that there is a long-standing enmity between their two fathers, a wrong whose origins have grown hazy with time, but whose effects are still felt, both in their own lives and in the mindset of the surrounding community.

  Desperate to secure her compliance with his "Rules," Iris's father promises his daughter the extra tuition that will enable her to train as a doctor—but in return she must promise to forgo all contact with Tom. For a time Iris keeps her side of the bargain. But as her scientific knowledge increases, so does her scepticism about the family disease. She begins to suspect that the curse has been an exercise in mind control, a means her father has concocted for keeping her close to him. She is determined that her feelings for Tom shall not be denied.

  This does not end well.

  We then retrace our steps a couple of decades. Charles Danforth is a doctor. He and Iris's father, Alonso Villarca, were medical students together in London in the 1860s. Charles has not seen Alonso in twenty years, but when his old friend summons him to Rawblood, he hastens there at once. He has fond memories of the place, of the companionship and good living that was once to be had there. At the end of a strenuous journey he is looking forward to a good meal in front of a roaring fire, but he arrives to a house that feels chilly and strangely deserted. The butler, Shakes, has been instructed to take Charles straight to the cellars, where Alonso has constructed an exact replica of their old laboratory in London. Charles is horrified to discover that Alonso himself is greatly changed. He has a disease, he explains, an inherited condition that is gradually eating away at his immune system. He has summoned Charles specifically for the purpose of reviving their student experiments, in the hope that they can not only restore Alonso's health but also prevent the disease from infecting future generations.

  This does not end well, either:

  From the very first I never judged Alonso by the standards I apply to other men: he has been for me a person apart from rules and even morals; a creature of exotic charm, and instinct, and, I had thought, integrity. I did him grave wrong, once. But I ask myself now if this was the greater one: to allow our friendship to proceed along such lines; to be restrained by undue deference to his mind and to his character, so that we are brought to such a pass as this. His is gone, his scientific mind has gone . . . This has been a madman’s errand. I cannot credit that I was borne along by it . . . (p. 154)
  It would take several thousand words to adequately summarize the complex, multi-stranded narrative that develops, and mere summary should not be the purpose of any review. If I were pressed to sum up Ward’s novel in just a few words then I would say that Rawblood is a story about the search for truth, about family secrets and the guilt that is often associated with them. It is a story of science versus magic, a story about England in the seismic aftermath of World War One. At its heart though, Rawblood is a ghost story. Everyone we meet in these pages—Iris, Charles, Alonso, Tom and those who come before them—encounters the Rawblood ghost. Everyone has a theory about it. "She is like a disease, in many ways," Alonso maintains:

  It was not all a lie. I believe she travels in our blood, passed down, that she is a biological inheritance, as much as a spiritual one . . . But she is like nothing on Earth, really. She comes in the night. Sometimes like mist or fog. A woman, or once a woman. White, starved. She comes with the sound of grinding stone, and despair. She looks into your eyes, and then . . . (pp. 77-8)
  Iris is not satisfied with such an outlandish explanation, and it is left to her to solve the mystery for herself. The solution will cost her everything, however. If there is a happy ending to be had here, it is probably not the one the reader was hoping for.

  Catriona Ward's love of classical horror fiction is richly evident throughout Rawblood. We find direct references to Shakespeare’s Macbeth and to Ibsen’s Ghosts. It is impossible to read Charles Danforth’s account of Alonso Villarca's breakdown and not be reminded of the career of Victor Frankenstein, from his golden youth as a student in Geneva to his later hubris and descent into madness. Rawblood itself, the house, carries within its granite enclave the imprint of the countless haunted edifices that no doubt helped to inspire it: the castle of Otranto, Wildfell Hall, Bly, Hill House, even Dracula's castle. And in the manner of the novel’s construction—the wheels within wheels, the generation-spanning curse, the search for answers—the novel has about it something of Maturin's 1820 classic Melmoth the Wanderer. And yet Rawblood is a fiercely original work of horror fiction that draws from its antecedents not in the manner of a vampire sucking blood, but of a thirsty artisan raising water from a well.

  A number of contemporary writers have tried their hand at working within the established tradition of the English ghost story, with varying degrees of success. Patrick McGrath made a good fist of it in Martha Peake; A. N. Wilson played it safe by cribbing off Henry James. Diane Setterfield, John Harwood, and Jonathan Aycliffe have all produced novels that could similarly be described as neo-gothic; all, for this reader at least, have proved disappointing. Melodrama and pastiche do not a convincing ghost story make, and all have fallen foul of these common pitfalls. The classic texts of horror fiction, while rich in melodrama, have important truths to convey about the time in which they were written—hence their continuing popularity and strength as literature. In the absence of the innate background awareness of societal norms and given assumptions that grant such texts weight, modern pastiches of Victorian fiction tend to resemble it at the surface level only, and therefore often feel lightweight and ultimately pointless.

  For the contemporary horror writer wishing to make an original contribution to the literature, at least part of the trick lies in noting one’s inevitable debt to one’s antecedents without remaining in thrall to them. Such a goal can be achieved through ironic awareness, through stylistic innovation, through revealing previously hidden aspects of what has gone before. Luckily for horror readers, Catriona Ward has undertaken all three tasks to marvellous effect, raising Rawblood far above pastiche and towards great literature.

  As much as it is a lush evocation of past times, Rawblood offers a stark critique of social injustice during the Victorian age, shining an interrogative light upon racial and social prejudice, conditions in the Victorian mental asylum, abuse of children, negative societal attitudes towards homosexuals and single mothers. Whilst Ward’s backdrops, both urban and rural, are masterfully evoked, Rawblood is refreshingly, almost shockingly free of nostalgia. Above all, there is a strong current of feminism running through these pages. Mary Hopewell, Hephzibah Brigstocke, Meg Danforth, and of course Iris Villarca herself all suffer as a result of men’s bad decisions, but their impulse is not to submit but to break free, to seek out an independent destiny. These are not the passive victims of so much horror fiction. Neither, gods be praised, are they feisty paragons. The women of Rawblood are conflicted, complex and sometimes calculating. "I have been careful to seem mad for him," says Meg Danforth, a sentence that can be read two ways.

  This complexity is on display especially in the portrayal of Hephzibah Brigstocke, whose ownership of her Roma background is made most manifest in the rejections, hardships and prejudice she has been forced to endure because of it. In her blackmail and treachery, Hephzibah could easily be dismissed as a negative stereotype—and yet here is a woman who can quote Dante in the original Italian, who has longed for nothing so much as freedom from dependence, whose personal resources extend so deep we sense we have barely brushed the surface of this compelling character. "I've had to shift all my life," Hephzibah justifies herself to the pompous Reverend Comber—Ward clearly understands the heavy moral and emotional burden such shifting has exacted, and Miss Brigstocke could easily have commanded a narrative all by herself.

  Charles's sister Meg, abandoned in desperate circumstances by her brother and eventually brought home to Rawblood as Alonso’s wife, perhaps comes closest to cementing our understanding of the Rawblood ghost, and of the violence that will eventually provide this novel's rationale:

  What is that phrase? Like calls to like. I have seen the marks of cruelty on her. I know not what she is or where she came from. But she has been brutally used beyond what a person can stand and live.
  . . .To see her is to know emptiness. But I saw that emptiness when I was very young. They called me a witch in Grimstock and Samuel Bantry took what he thought was his due from a witch . . . He called me a witch. He made me one. (p. 291)
  Yet Meg, like her daughter Iris, rejects victimhood. Her protection of the pregnant house maid Chloe will later be echoed in the final service provided for Iris by Lottie and her fellow nurses at Earlswood Asylum. These women know that they cannot rely on men for compassion and fair-mindedness—they must shift for themselves.

  We cannot leave this discussion without talking about Ward's use of language, and how glorious it is. The shifts in perspective and tone between the various sections—Iris's narrative, Charles's diary, Meg's recollections, Mary and Hephzibah's Italian journey—are assured and stylistically varied, producing a cohesive, tapestry-like texture, beautifully articulated and expertly controlled. Threads that feel disparate at the outset are eventually drawn together, rounding out the story in a manner that is wholly satisfying, and with no loose ends. It is Ward's awareness of form, her confidence in juxtaposing a closely observed social realism with a more fragmented, modernist approach that marks her out as a literary stylist of the first rank. Here, for example, a character imagines a night-time train journey as a flashback to war:

  Some broad unknown thing whistles past, slaps something else. We rattle, we are dice shaken in a cup. There are shrieks and cracks. My heart tittups, a startled colt. Unseen machinery squeals ha ha ha like nasty laughter. The illusion that we're on solid ground is rudely, terribly interrupted; the carriage is a wooden box designed to stave in and crush our flesh. The ragged ends of timber and shards of glass will pierce us, burning metal will twist into evil curves and pen us in as we burn. (p. 263)
  There is much that can be read between the lines of Rawblood, and much pleasure to be gained from teasing out its threads. Over and above such abstract concerns, it is a damn fine story, well paced and genuinely disturbing and achingly sad. This is one of those novels that leaves you loath to read anything else for a while, the world it evokes is so complete and so richly imagined. Rawblood delivers all the mystery and menace that one might hope for in a classic ghost story. Moreover, it does not shrink from the ineffable. Fans of supernatural horror need not be disappointed: in Rawblood, the ghosts are real.

  Nina Allan's stories have appeared in many anthologies, including Best British Fantasy 2014, Solaris Rising 3, and The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women. Her novella Spin, a reimagining of the Arachne myth, won the British Science Fiction Award in 2014, and her collection The Silver Wind, a story-cycle on themes of time and memory, won the Grand Prix de L'Imaginaire in the same year. Her debut novel The Race, set in an alternate future England and featuring bio-engineered greyhounds and island-sized whales, was published in 2014 by NewCon Press. She lives and works in North Devon.

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  © Copyright 2015 Nina Allan
  ABOUT NINA ALLAN
  Nina Allan's stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Best Horror of the Year #6, The Year's Best Science Fiction #33, and The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women. Her novella Spin, a science fictional re-imagining of the Arachne myth, won the BSFA Award in 2014, and her story-cycle The Silver Wind was awarded the Grand Prix de L'Imaginaire in the same year. Her debut novel The Race was a finalist for the 2015 BSFA Award, the Kitschies Red Tentacle, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Her second novel The Rift was published in 2017 by Titan Books. Nina lives and works on the Isle of Bute in Western Scotland. Find her blog, The Spider's House, at www.ninaallan.co.uk.
  ONE COMMENT ON “RAWBLOOD BY CATRIONA WARD”

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  APRIL 19, 2017 AT 9:44 PM
  I have just finished this and I completely agree, it is awesome ❤☠️ I haven't been this excited about a new (to me) writer since Helen Oyeyemi 📚

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• All About Romance
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  << BACK The Girl from Rawblood Catriona Ward Buy This Book Okay. So where to start? I’m not sure which is most prevalent, but in The Girl from Rawblood, Catriona Ward has written a combination of horror, gothic, mystery and a hint of tragic romance that could be utterly fascinating, but just did not work for me. I’m really not sure why – it should hit every fangirl button I have between the gothic aspects, the horror elements and the author’s beautiful turn of phrase. But it just didn’t. When we first meet her, Iris Villarca is an eleven-year-old girl living alone with her father at their Devon estate, Rawblood. Almost completely secluded, Iris has made friends with a neighbor, Tom, in complete defiance of her father. After Tom’s father dies, Iris and Tom begin to get closer, until Iris falls ill, and believes it to be an illness of her family line, as told to her by her father. The Villarcas have a curse in their veins, haunted in their own home, but unable to leave. However, we don’t get to read Iris’s story for long, as we are sent back in time to 1881, when Dr. Charles Danforth arrives at Rawblood at the behest of his friend, Alonso Villarca. Together, they begin a series of experiments that would be at home in Frankenstein, with poor bunnies as their subjects. Alonso is convinced that somehow they can find a cure for the curse of the Villarcas, and that the answer lies in blood and genetics, a new field for the time. Charles, however, is haunted, by his past relationship with Alonso, by the experiments he is now a part of, and by a figure in white. And later we go even further back, to 1839 and Mary Hopewell, the woman who brought the Villarca name to Rawblood, as she journeys to Italy and meets a wealthy, and somehow snake-like, Spaniard. And then, back to the future, with Meg, Iris’s mother, and Iris’s birth. There is so much back and forth in time and switching between narrators that it was pretty confusing. As I said earlier, the language really is quite lovely. There’s a haunting quality to everything, and it’s beautifully lyrical. The gothic horror element is well done, with an almost existential dread overhanging the cast of characters we meet. But all the beautiful language and flow notwithstanding, I spent so much time completely confused by the story that I just could not enjoy it. The story is frequently told from the sidelines – the daughter instead of the father, the friend instead of the cursed – and the distance that affords from the terror experienced by the main characters serves to further distance the reader as well. In the end, the plot remains too disjointed, spread across the generations without enough to tie it all together. To be perfectly frank, if I hadn’t been reviewing the book, I would have stopped reading within the first fifty pages. There are some moments that are really well done, especially if you want chills up your spine, such as the journal entries of Dr. Danforth, as he starts to see the ghostly figure. Meg’s story, and the mist, and the overall atmosphere dread work pretty well. But here is just so much else to get through that doesn’t make sense. I would definitely try the author again, though, since I’m a bit of a sucker for lyrical writing. I’d just be a bit more particular, and look for something that doesn’t jump around so much in terms of narrators and time period. Buy The Girl from Rawblood by Catriona Ward: Buy from Amazon.com Nook Kobo Book Details Reviewer : Melanie Bopp Grade : C- Sensuality : N/A Book Type : Gothic Review Tags : Recent Comments Caz Owens on The Duke by Katharine Ashe Caz Owens on The Duke by Katharine Ashe mel burns on Someone to Wed by Mary Balogh Marian on Devil in Spring by Lisa Kleypas Kate Marshall on The Duke by Katharine Ashe Leave A Comment Comment Comment... Name (required) Email (required) Website POST COMMENT ABOUT AAR FAQS BLOG REVIEWS SUBSCRIBE SITEMAP CONTACT US LOGIN FacebookTwitterInstagramEmailPower SearchPower Search

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  No bodices were harmed in this historical romance.
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  The Girl from Rawblood
  The Girl from Rawblood, March 2017
  by Catriona Ward

  Sourcebooks Landmark
  Featuring: Iris Villarca
  368 pages
  ISBN: 1492637424
  EAN: 9781492637424
  Kindle: B01M4LANTP
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  "If you love reading Gothic historical mystery novels will you love this book!"
  Fresh Fiction Review
  The Girl from Rawblood
  Catriona Ward

  Reviewed by Magdalena Johansson
  Posted February 22, 2017

  Thriller Historical | Romance Historical | Historical

  When it comes to horror a Gothic tale has something that with all likelihood always will appeal to me. Add a mysterious family haunted by an entity just called "her" and I'm sold. THE GIRL FROM RAWBLOOD instantly appealed to me with its fascinating cover and interesting description. Iris and her father live in a lonely old mansion on Dartmoor and he warns her that she should never fall in love because strong feelings bring on "her" and when she comes, brutal death will follow. Nevertheless, Iris does fall in love and with that, a series of events begin that lead Iris to learn the truth about "her."

  I found THE GIRL FROM RAWBLOOD to be a wonderful tragic book. It's beautifully written and I was quickly pulled into the story. What I found to be especially intriguing was the book was not chronically written. Instead, the story jumped between characters and time periods. However, it never felt random, instead, it felt like that was the logical way of telling the tale because that makes the realization of the truth about "her" so much more poignant. There is a moment in the book when it all just started to make sense, in a dreadful kind of way and then everything started to fall into its place. I was quite taken with the ending and I really felt so sorry for Iris and everything she had to endure.

  I'm not sure I would classify THE GIRL FROM RAWBLOOD as horror, it's more like a Gothic historical mystery, with horrifying and tragic events. With a dash of romance added. Not much, but it's the glue that holds it all together. I think Catriona Ward has written a tremendously interesting and engrossing novel and I can't wait to see what she will write next.

  Learn more about The Girl from Rawblood

  SUMMARY

  For generations the Villarcas have died mysteriously, and young. Now Iris and her father will finally understand why. . .

  At the turn of England's century, as the wind whistles in the lonely halls of Rawblood, young Iris Villarca is the last of her family's line. They are haunted, through the generations, by "her," a curse passed down through ancient blood that marks each Villarca for certain heartbreak, and death.

  Iris forsakes her promise to her father, to remain alone, safe from the world. She dares to fall in love, and the consequences of her choice are immediate and terrifying. As the world falls apart around her, she must take a final journey back to Rawblood where it all began and where it must all end...

  From the sun dappled hills of Italy to the biting chill of Victorian dissection halls, The Girl from Rawblood is a lyrical and haunting historical novel of darkness, love, and the ghosts of the past.

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  REVIEW: RAWBLOOD BY CATRIONA WARD
  Rawblood by Catriona WardRawblood (10 October 2014) by Catriona Ward

  Rawblood opens with the idiosyncratic voice of eleven-year-old Iris Villarca. She lives with her father in a lonely mansion, the titular Rawblood, on Dartmoor. There, he has convinced her of the legend of their family: the Villarcas suffer from a hereditary condition, given the evocative moniker 'horror autotoxicus', and Iris will die young if she neglects to follow his strict set of capital-R Rules. Essentially, the Rules say she must stay away from other people, with the sole exception of her father, and avoid strong feelings and excitement at all costs. It is when Iris starts conspiring to venture out after dark with her best friend, Tom, that she breaks the Rules and risks her father's wrath - but also comes to believe the condition is not merely her father's invention.

  When Iris narrates, her voice is mesmerising, though it takes a while to get used to. She twists words in strange ways and relates dialogue in staccato fashion; sometimes she seems to talk in riddles, and once you've finished the book, it's easy to see how many of her enigmatic declarations might be considered a form of foreshadowing.
  Loneliness is not what people think it is. It is not a song. It's a little bitter thing you keep close, like an egg under a hen. What happens when the shell cracks? What comes forth?
  In chapter two, Rawblood switches to the diary of medical student Charles Danforth, 30 years before Iris's story. For a while it is a two-hander, with chapters alternating between these viewpoints. Then, for reasons I won't spoil, it moves on from them, and new voices are added to the mix.

  The story of Rawblood is rooted in the landscape of Dartmoor - a place made up of clouds, bracken, cold streams, and the vast, lonely moor. The way Iris describes it, it's like countryside remembered from childhood. The Villarcas are always drawn back to this stark and beautiful place in the end (and it's exactly this that proves to be the key to the story), but they're often taken far away from it, and it's these diversions that produce some of the book's best moments. The Mary and Hephzibah chapter is incredible - a five-star short story in its own right. The conversation between Mary and Leopoldo, Iris's final journey through the house; these are stunning scenes, unlike anything I have come across in any book, never mind a ghost story, a genre typically riddled with cliches (cliches I love, but cliches nonetheless).

  Rawblood's only failing is that it is slightly uneven, not always as brilliant as its own most brilliant moments. There are points when it seems like a mostly conventional piece of creepy historical fiction and is liable to drag slightly. Iris's voice dominates, and while Charles Danforth's narrative is obviously distinguished from hers, with some of the other narrators it is not so clear. Iris has such a distinctive way of describing things that when the same style bleeds into other characters' inner monologues, it's very noticeable. Similarly, Danforth's journal sometimes reads like a journal but often reads very much like part of a novel. But these are small flaws in an otherwise excellent book.

  You may guess the tragic twist before the final chapters, but even if you do, Rawblood's climax is executed so perfectly that it barely matters. Rarely have I felt so thrilled by the climactic scenes of a book, not particularly because they're terribly scary, but because they're simply so good and complete, bringing everything together so neatly. The way it's all done is really quite awe-inspiring.

  When I first sampled this book, I wrote that 'Rawblood appears to be quite unlike any other horror/ghost/gothic story I've read'. That turned out to be even truer than I suspected. It's a thing of melancholic beauty, an immediate addition to my list of personal favourites in the genre. Haunting, atmospheric, heartbreaking - a perfect winter read.

  I received an advance review copy of Rawblood from the publisher through NetGalley.

  Buy the book on Amazon: Kindle & Hardback

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  BOOK REVIEW: RAWBLOOD BY CATRIONA WARD

  September 21, 2016 11:00 am
  Out Now

  Published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson. More information here.

  Review by Miriam Atkinson

  rawbloodBefore I had even opened the book, I was fascinated by the creeping black branches of Rawblood’s cover art. The blurb promised a blend of genres, including thriller and the gothic. The words emblazoned on the book’s cover – ‘She comes in the night. She looks into your eyes. One by one, she has taken us all.’ – had me captivated and truly excited to begin reading. The first chapter began strong, with a foreboding promise of doom…that I waited and waited for.

  The first two-thirds of Rawblood feature two separate narratives. One follows Charles, a doctor in the late Nineteenth Century, while the other follows Iris, a teenager living in the early Twentieth Century. The two stories are connected through Iris’ father and Charles’ friend, Alonso Villarca, their ancestral mansion of Rawblood, and the ghostly spectre that haunts the house.

  I found Iris’ story the more interesting of the two, because, through her character, the reader joins the search for answers into why the Villarca family is cursed with the ghost of Rawblood. In contrast I felt that Charles’ story took too long to get going and I did not find him a very likeable character. This was due to his constant denial and at times dismissive attitude, and also because of his unwillingness to accept responsibility until it was far too late. Despite some brief flashes of supernatural intrigue, I was always happy when I returned to Iris’ chapters, as I cared a great deal more about what would happen to her. There was also the added benefit of her chapters moving the plot along at a much quicker pace.

  The final third of novel got quite confusing as several new characters were given their own chapters, written in the first person. These later chapters skipped backwards and forwards in time, showing members of the Villarca family over the period of a century. While I was interested to see how these characters (eventually) interacted with the ghost, I did have to constantly reference back to the family trees, provided at the beginning of the book, to remind myself how all these characters where related to each other. So many characters and so many plots to remember all at once was slightly overwhelming. As a reader I feel it may have been easier to include these flashback scenes throughout the novel rather than coming to all of them at the end.

  Ultimately, Rawblood is strong gothic thriller that reminds me in places of the wild setting and characters of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. It is also clear that author, Catriona Ward, carefully thought out how the histories of her characters are woven together. However, for me personally, I found the pace to be too slow and I was sometimes confused by which character was narrating the story. The interesting story with a shocking twist, will be enough to appeal to some readers, but others may be left frustrated by the style in which Rawblood has been written.

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  THE GIRL FROM RAWBLOOD BY CATRIONA WARD
  2/4/2017
  BY JONATHAN THORNTON

  "The dreams are coming thick and fast. She's impatient for me now. There are no words to express it - the terrible freedom, the malice and rage. To look through her eyes is to know the dark centre of the world. I dread it and it is thrilling."
  The Girl from Rawblood by Catriona Ward
  Catriona Ward's The Girl From Rawblood (2017) is a striking and powerful gothic novel. With its themes of hereditary illness, madness and death, a haunting female spectre and the central domineering presence of Rawblood itself, a crumbling, sprawling ancestral home, the book vividly evokes the tone and feel of the gothic, with loving tributes to classics of the genre from Frankenstein (1818) through to Gormenghast (1946-1959). However The Girl From Rawblood is more than an expertly executed pastiche. Ward uses the tropes and trappings of the gothic to really dig down into what makes the genre tick, exploring and exposing the genre's neuroses to discover what makes the genre so compelling after over a hundred years of gothic fiction, and why the concerns of the gothic are still resonant to us today.
  Iris Villarca lives alone with her father in the family mansion Rawblood. She is the last of her line, a family cursed by tragedy and the disease Horror autotoxicus. Her father has given her a list of rules to live by to mitigate the effects of the disease - above all she must not form attachments to others, which can only end in pain and misery - but Iris breaks her father's rules and falls in love with Tom Gilmore, the son of a local farmer. As her father struggles to protect her and she fights for her freedom to choose her life, the curse of the Villarcas strikes and Iris learns about 'her', the terrifying spectre that is the true force behind the downfall of generations of her family.

  Across a range of narrative voices, but always circling back to the central perspective of Iris, The Girl From Rawblood tracks the misfortunes of the Villarcas across the generations. Ward deftly weaves together a complex plot, which as it evolves creates both a sense of preordained doom reminiscent of a Nordic saga and a feeling of atavistic, primal terror. The evils of the past and the ghastly mistakes of her ancestors compound down the generations, culminating in Iris and her conflict with her father. The novel is not just an exploration of a family haunted by a terrifying spectre, but the process by which this spectre is brought into existence.

  The large cast and the decades spanned by The Girl From Rawblood allow it to explore the concerns and obsessions that have shaped the gothic down the years, but very much on Ward's own terms. Sections of the book are narrated by Charles Danforth, friend and colleague of Alonso Villarca, Iris' father. As we read through his diary entries, it becomes clear that Charles and Alonso were more than just friends, and used to be lovers. Sublimated and repressed homosexual desire recur throughout gothic fiction, from J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (1872) to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting Of Hill House (1959). Ward is interested in exploring this sexual repression; Charles and Alonso's relationship has disintegrated because of a society that labels their orientation "degenerate". The frequent quotations of Bible verses during moments of distress show how Charles has tried to turn to religion to repent for what he sees as a sin. The book clearly shows that it is this repression, and the resulting inability of these two passionate men to process their feelings openly and healthily because of the demands of the society that they live in, which causes their relationship to curdle into destructive co-dependence.

  The gothic has always had a fascination with science, with works like 'Frankenstein' born out of the dawn of new scientific understandings that threatened to upend humanity's worldview, even as it was achieved with outlandish and grisly methods. Charles and Alonso are both students of medicine, and work together on hereditary diseases in an attempt to understand the Villarca curse. The cool, rational reasoning behind their wrong-headed ideas about inheritance is contrasted with the horrific animal experimentation they carry out in Rawblood's basement. These echo the real experiments from the early years of modern medicine that inspired Mary Shelley and Robert Louis Stevenson to write horror stories. Alonso says,

  "The science of life is a superb and dazzlingly lighted hall, which may be reached only by passing through a long and ghastly kitchen."

  It is by this reasoning that Charles and Alonso justify their experiments. However, the modern reader will know that Alonso's theories about heredity are wrong, and that the experiments he is doing cannot give him the information he needs. Similarly, the curse that haunts the Villarcas is something supernatural, and cannot be understood by the laws of science and rationality.

  The darker side of an age without medical ethics is explored during Iris's stay in a mental asylum. Insanity is a favourite theme of gothic fiction, and The mad woman in the attic is a gothic staple, but here the plight of the mentally ill is explored with sympathy, the horror coming not from any overused tropes about asylums and the mentally ill being scary, but from the horrendous abuses suffered by Iris and the other patients. Iris is heavily sedated as punishment, strapped to her bed, and worst of all subjected to experimental lobotomy treatment without her consent, all in the name of "curing" her. Again this reflects the real suffering of people committed to asylums in very recent history.

  Gothic fiction developed over a period of history which saw bigger conflicts and wars, and ultimately the technological horrors and mass deaths of the two world wars. Thus the destructive potential of technology and the fear and trauma of these wars is something that worked its way into the mode. The Girl From Rawblood opens in the run up to World War I, and the spectre of the impending conflict hangs heavy over the book. Alonso decides to remove the temptation of Tom by sending him off to join the army; he returns psychologically scarred by the horrors that he has seen on the front. Part of the novel is told from the point of view of Frank Coulson, Tom's cousin, who is sent to the same asylum Iris is held at to recuperate after losing his leg in the war. The butchery of soldiers at the front is compared to the butchery of the mentally ill in the name of cures and the butchery of animals in the name of science.

  As Iris's story spirals out backwards and forwards through time towards its brutal conclusion, the novel explores the anxieties, fears and horrors that have shaped gothic fiction over the years, bringing to it Ward's modern perspective. Exorcising the spectre that haunts the Villarcas involves engaging with the nightmares that have plagued the past two centuries. However the novel's powerful conclusion brings us back to focus in on the novel's central relationships, between Iris and her father and Iris and Tom. In a story in which love frequently winds up being a force for destruction and pain, it is fitting and moving that it ends by exploring the possibility of redemption through love

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  ​For generations the Villarcas have died mysteriously, and young. Now Iris and her father will finally understand why. . .
  ​
  At the turn of England's century, as the wind whistles in the lonely halls of Rawblood, young Iris Villarca is the last of her family's line. They are haunted, through the generations, by "her," a curse passed down through ancient blood that marks each Villarca for certain heartbreak, and death.
  Iris forsakes her promise to her father, to remain alone, safe from the world. She dares to fall in love, and the consequences of her choice are immediate and terrifying. As the world falls apart around her, she must take a final journey back to Rawblood where it all began and where it must all end...
  From the sun dappled hills of Italy to the biting chill of Victorian dissection halls, The Girl from Rawblood is a lyrical and haunting historical novel of darkness, love, and the ghosts of the past.
  Picture
  PLEASE NOTE THIS IS THE AMERICAN VERSION OF RAWBLOOD

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