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The Martian's Regress
The Martian's Regress
Jul 13, 2025 4:26 AM

Author:J. O. Morgan

The Martian's Regress

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE TS ELIOT PRIZE 2020**

From the winner of the Costa Poetry Award

A lone martian returns to Earth. He leaves behind him a hardened survivalist culture, its muddled myths and songs, its continued abuse of the environment that sustains it. During this journey back to the now-broken and long-abandoned mother planet, the martian begins to consider his own uncertain origins, and his own future.

Cut off from his people, the martian's story is that of the individual: his duty at odds with his desire; the race of which he's still a part playing always on his mind, as well as the race that once was. This is the story of what life becomes when stripped of all that makes it worth living - of what humans become when they lose their humanity.

The Martian's Regress is a brilliant, provocative, often darkly comic work that explores what a fragile environment eventually makes of those who persist in tampering with it.

Reviews

A rippling, impeccable lyricism that’s delicious to read aloud, and a down-to-earth, deadpan violence that recalls Simon Armitage… If you haven’t discovered Morgan, this weird, unsettling trip is the perfect introduction.

—— Tristram Fane Saunders , Daily Telegraph *Poetry Book of the Month*

Startling... What it does exceptionally well is make clear what ecological catastrophe might feel like as well as look like... What a joy to read and re-read and re-read.

—— Stuart Kelly , Scotland on Sunday

[J. O. Morgan] has quietly established himself as a gifted writer of the long poem... The Martian’s Regress is an imaginative leap… In portraying the variously hopeful, hopeless, comic and bleak ways of apparent aliens, Morgan brings us closer to ourselves.

—— Ben Wilkinson , Guardian

The Martian’s Regress is a powerful long poem… An interesting and always accessible variation on a dystopian theme… The story remains taut and reverberates…[and] draws elements of humour even from dark places.

—— Bookmunch

Dark and immersive; a feast of storytelling that lingers long after the last morsel's been consumed.

—— SAM LLOYD, author of The Memory Wood

This beguiling and unsettling debut had me hooked from the first page . . . a unique, strange and defiant folk horror story which lingers long in the memory.

—— DAILY EXPRESS

A bewitching, beguiling, and deeply unsettling tale of one woman's strange life. It will ensnare you from page one and keep you riveted until the end.

—— CAITLIN STARLING, author of The Luminous Dead

In this storytelling masterclass, everything is inverted.

—— DAILY MAIL

A glorious, pitch-black fairytale of a book. Lush, strange and defiant. As soon as I finished it, I went straight back to the start and read it again.

—— KIRSTY LOGAN, author of Things We Say in the Dark

Odd and unsettling, this might not be for everyone, but we thought it was magic.

—— HEAT magazine

Dark and magical, one of the best books I've read this year.

—— Books, Bones & Buffy

A fairytale, a psychological portrait and a bleak drama.

—— New Books Magazine

A brilliant and sinister debut.

—— Ginger Nuts of Horror

Beautiful, strange . . . hideously dark, delights in unsettling.

—— The Bookbag

Creepy and disturbing right from the start.

—— Spooky Mrs Green

A disturbing but brilliant narrative . . . a rare treat.

—— WOMAN'S WEEKLY

Has all the ingredients of a modern gothic.

—— Herald, Hot List 2020

A debut novel that's carefully calibrated to make every single hair on the back of your neck stand up on end

—— Scotland on Sunday

A modern gothic thriller that draws on the author's own Highland childhood

—— Herald Magazine

With Pine, (Toon) … has passed the debut hurdle in striking style.

—— Harper's Bazaar

A haunting and heartbreakingly bewitching tale … Packed with folklore, magic and an eerie sense of foreboding every time you turn the page, Pine will captivate readers from the very first page

—— Her.ie

A gothic stirring of folklore and legend

—— RTÉ Guide

Eerie and spell-binding

—— Irish Examiner

From the first page PINE casts a sense of slowly-rising unease that is completely compelling. It's both eerie and thrilling at once, and had me under its spell until the end

—— Sophie Mackintosh, author of THE WATER CURE

An atmospheric tale of memory and loss

—— Daily Mirror

Eerie and dark, you'll be mesmerised by this dramatic tale with its tightly-woven plot

—— Woman

If there's any doubt that the Gothic thriller is enjoying a boom, Francine Toon's debut should settle the matter. PINE, a moving study of memory and loss, is both spooky and tender; drenched in a sense of place and yet eerily timeless

—— Mick Herron

Combines the Gothic sensibilities of Shirley Jackson with the psychologically astute suspense of Gillian Flynn ... will leave you gripped and transfixed

—— Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti

Francine Toon's touching account of a flawed, yet tender, father-daughter relationship in PINE is all the more compelling against the starkly beautiful backdrop of the Scottish highlands

—— Livia Franchini, author of Shelf Life

A beautifully crafted gothic tale of isolation and not belonging. Thoroughly gripping and stunningly atmospheric

—— Lucie McKnight Hardy, author of Water Shall Refuse Them

An atmospheric tale of memory and loss, movingly told through a child's eyes

—— Sunday Express Magazine

Many of the themes familiar from Austen’s novels are deftly revisited by Hornby, and the letters that are reimagined are pitch-perfect, with deeply touching confidences shared in family correspondences. You can tell this book by its cover – it’s quite lovely.

—— IRISH TIMES

Beautiful novel[…] light hearted historical fiction which resembles Austen’s novels, a really lovely read very suitable for incoming spring

—— Excuse My Reading (Instagram)

Gill Hornby unfolds it all in her imagination.

—— The Times

Hornby combines a moving portrait of sisterly devotion with a comic depiction of the provincial life so brilliantly evoked in Austen's own novels

—— DAILY MAIL

[A]t the heart of it all there's a romantic twist..."Hornby is at her best describing the complex bonds between the excellent women of her story. She describes the horrors, but also the pleasures of spinsterhood"

—— THE TIMES
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