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Beast
Beast explores how dreams and desires can both liberate or confine the dreamer.
Eve, a young self-taught musician sits on a bench overlooking the grassy crossroads of a model village.
She is dreaming of the power of music. Her dreams reach into the cosmos, summoning Demon and his rabbit familiar.
Eve longs to harness the divine in service of her music.
But will she instead make a deal with Demon for worldly success?
Demon dreads the terrible price he will pay for failure and thus begins a long battle for Eve's soul.
Eve, a young self-taught musician sits on a bench overlooking the grassy crossroads of a model village.
She is dreaming of the power of music. Her dreams reach into the cosmos, summoning Demon and his rabbit familiar.
Eve longs to harness the divine in service of her music.
But will she instead make a deal with Demon for worldly success?
Demon dreads the terrible price he will pay for failure and thus begins a long battle for Eve's soul.
262 pages, Paperback
First published July 31, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 19, 2025
So often Demon's gift is in the priming and opening of the eyes of others. Is that then what so many want? Attention?
Certainly it is the lack of attention that keeps ordinary the lives of those who could by rights have been extraordinary.
Beast (2025) is Lulu Allison's latest novel, following her Women's Prize longlisted 2021 work Salt Lick.
It is published by the wonderful Bluemoose Books (see below).
Beast centres around the figure of Eve, sitting on a bench on the village green when, dreaming of the power of music, and invoking the divine she summons instead a demon, who takes for himself a rabbit as a familiar.
And there she was, the one who had pulled down the ancient wreathings of the divine. The trader, the dreamer, the mark.
Eve.
We found her in the dark of approaching night, a few hours after Demon's dizzying arrival and my own equally dizzying transformation.
Yes, we were three transformed creatures: Demon from blissful sleeper into unwilling practitioner of ancient lore, me from drab rabbit into divine companion, Eve from an angular, awkward child into a musical explorer who had summoned the divine.
I could not tell it on that first sighting but I came to like her very much. I care for her still. I like too who she became, which is not always a given for those who cross paths with Demon or his brothers. All this I know.
It is Rabbit who tells the story, looking back on that day 20 years earlier, as he waits with Demon for Eve to finally yield her soul in exchange for what Demon has given her.
The story is, in that sense, a modern day Dr Faustus, although as we, Demon and Rabbit follow Eve through her early musical yearnings, her brief period of pop semi-stardom, and then her creation of a modern-day opera, telling the story of two of the villagers, male lovers, Demon finds it frustratingly hard to pin down exactly what Eve yearns for as part of the pact he would like to make.
This is also a story, as is Eve's opera, about a yearning for acceptance, as much as it is one for fame
A normal man and woman, married, careful, safe, obedient. Their cultivated name and their presumptuously tended status bestowing both privilege and protection.
From tyranny are such spells concocted.
Normal. If all that was most common was called usual then perhaps fewer would be excluded. Abnormal is so much more threatening than unusual. But then, it is the usage of a word over time that confers its meaning. Human mouths will soon enough flavour a word with distaste and scorn if it is distaste and scorn they require.
The author's own take on the novel's themes, and what readers may take from the book, can be found here: https://luluallison.net/beast/
And after the Wish Cow that accompanied Salt Lick, my copy of this book came with a hand-crafted medal of Rabbit and Demon drifting in the cosmos:
Demon grabbed a hold of me and we were gone in a boiling hiss of frustration and fury.
We span and soared and Demon shrieked. We screeched down a chimney, ripped through branches, hurtled up and up and up to the edges of the sky. I huddled into Demon, shut my eyes. The reckless violence of our trajectory was terrifying. I shrank as small as I could.
We left the last shreds of earth's atmosphere. The chill black of the cosmos soon soothed Demon. He loosened his grip on me and, more slowly, I loosened my grip on myself. We hung, our bodies slowly finding out-flung passivity, adrift on the inclines of other gravities. After what felt like a long and relieving rest, Demon spoke.
'I am afraid.
A beautifully written novel - and a strong Booker and Women's Prize contender.
Thanks to the author for the advanced review copy.
The publisher
Bluemoose Books is an award winning independent publisher based in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. Kevin and Hetha Duffy started Bluemoose in 2006 and as a ‘family’ of readers and writers we’re passionate about the written word and stories. Stories are transformative and as publishers we delight in finding great new talent. If you’re looking for orange headed celebrity books, you’ve probably come to the wrong place. But if you want brilliant stories that have travelled from Hebden Bridge, across the border into Lancashire, down to London across to Moscow, Sofia and Budapest and into the United States, Australia, India, Colombia and Greenland, Iceland and Bosnia Herzagovina then Bluemoose is the publisher for you.
Salt Lick
Shown here with the tin-and-wood "wish cow" I received as one of those who crowd-funded the work.
Certainly it is the lack of attention that keeps ordinary the lives of those who could by rights have been extraordinary.
Beast (2025) is Lulu Allison's latest novel, following her Women's Prize longlisted 2021 work Salt Lick.
It is published by the wonderful Bluemoose Books (see below).
Beast centres around the figure of Eve, sitting on a bench on the village green when, dreaming of the power of music, and invoking the divine she summons instead a demon, who takes for himself a rabbit as a familiar.
And there she was, the one who had pulled down the ancient wreathings of the divine. The trader, the dreamer, the mark.
Eve.
We found her in the dark of approaching night, a few hours after Demon's dizzying arrival and my own equally dizzying transformation.
Yes, we were three transformed creatures: Demon from blissful sleeper into unwilling practitioner of ancient lore, me from drab rabbit into divine companion, Eve from an angular, awkward child into a musical explorer who had summoned the divine.
I could not tell it on that first sighting but I came to like her very much. I care for her still. I like too who she became, which is not always a given for those who cross paths with Demon or his brothers. All this I know.
It is Rabbit who tells the story, looking back on that day 20 years earlier, as he waits with Demon for Eve to finally yield her soul in exchange for what Demon has given her.
The story is, in that sense, a modern day Dr Faustus, although as we, Demon and Rabbit follow Eve through her early musical yearnings, her brief period of pop semi-stardom, and then her creation of a modern-day opera, telling the story of two of the villagers, male lovers, Demon finds it frustratingly hard to pin down exactly what Eve yearns for as part of the pact he would like to make.
This is also a story, as is Eve's opera, about a yearning for acceptance, as much as it is one for fame
A normal man and woman, married, careful, safe, obedient. Their cultivated name and their presumptuously tended status bestowing both privilege and protection.
From tyranny are such spells concocted.
Normal. If all that was most common was called usual then perhaps fewer would be excluded. Abnormal is so much more threatening than unusual. But then, it is the usage of a word over time that confers its meaning. Human mouths will soon enough flavour a word with distaste and scorn if it is distaste and scorn they require.
The author's own take on the novel's themes, and what readers may take from the book, can be found here: https://luluallison.net/beast/
Maybe they will consider the varied reach of dreams – how a wish can be as grand as the cosmos or as seemingly small as domesticity and acceptance – and yet sometimes, for some people, it is the second that is the greater leap.
Perhaps the musician at the crossroads, Robert Johnson, or Paganini or Eve, was not looking to do a deal with a devil, but reaching into the cosmos for the divine, and a demon just happened to be the divine creature who answered the call.
For some dreams are about power, about riches, about accessing the divine. For others, it is as simple as finding love and acceptance. Eve dreams in pure music.
And after the Wish Cow that accompanied Salt Lick, my copy of this book came with a hand-crafted medal of Rabbit and Demon drifting in the cosmos:
Demon grabbed a hold of me and we were gone in a boiling hiss of frustration and fury.
We span and soared and Demon shrieked. We screeched down a chimney, ripped through branches, hurtled up and up and up to the edges of the sky. I huddled into Demon, shut my eyes. The reckless violence of our trajectory was terrifying. I shrank as small as I could.
We left the last shreds of earth's atmosphere. The chill black of the cosmos soon soothed Demon. He loosened his grip on me and, more slowly, I loosened my grip on myself. We hung, our bodies slowly finding out-flung passivity, adrift on the inclines of other gravities. After what felt like a long and relieving rest, Demon spoke.
'I am afraid.
A beautifully written novel - and a strong Booker and Women's Prize contender.
Thanks to the author for the advanced review copy.
The publisher
Bluemoose Books is an award winning independent publisher based in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. Kevin and Hetha Duffy started Bluemoose in 2006 and as a ‘family’ of readers and writers we’re passionate about the written word and stories. Stories are transformative and as publishers we delight in finding great new talent. If you’re looking for orange headed celebrity books, you’ve probably come to the wrong place. But if you want brilliant stories that have travelled from Hebden Bridge, across the border into Lancashire, down to London across to Moscow, Sofia and Budapest and into the United States, Australia, India, Colombia and Greenland, Iceland and Bosnia Herzagovina then Bluemoose is the publisher for you.
Salt Lick
Shown here with the tin-and-wood "wish cow" I received as one of those who crowd-funded the work.
September 14, 2025
Perhaps the best thing I’ve read this year
September 18, 2025
I read the uncorrected proof.
For context, I've spent over three decades working in and around the music biz and I know at least half a dozen Eves and about a hundred Leons. I've witnessed first hand and heard a lot more the creative processes, tantrums, spats, feuds, myths, egos, bullsh*t and f*ckery that surrounds the industry.
I can think of only a few writers who can write about sound with originality. Lester Bangs and David Keenan are two of them. Lulu Allison gets close; there's no 'achingly beautifuls' here, but if you've read a million Uncuts, NMEs, Mojos and piles of music bios like I have, and you're listening to music well beyond the perimeters of the mainstream, you might find the endless descriptions of the (torturous) creative process and Eve's sound experiments a bit of a slog.
But for readers unfamiliar with the creative process, the music industry, and the music that Eve is making, the descriptions are great.
I really liked the story about Christopher and the model village, which becomes the focal point of the book. It has more than a whiff of British whimsy that reminds me of Tom Cox's Villager, which can only be a good thing.
But as much as I enjoyed the Robert Johnson selling his soul at the crossroads, Faustian pact idea that is the premise of the book, I just couldn't get on with the rabbit as narrator, and whenever the rabbit started in on philosophising about life as a spectral familiar and the demon's attempts to win Eve's soul, I lost interest, which is why the book gets 3 instead of 4 stars.
For context, I've spent over three decades working in and around the music biz and I know at least half a dozen Eves and about a hundred Leons. I've witnessed first hand and heard a lot more the creative processes, tantrums, spats, feuds, myths, egos, bullsh*t and f*ckery that surrounds the industry.
I can think of only a few writers who can write about sound with originality. Lester Bangs and David Keenan are two of them. Lulu Allison gets close; there's no 'achingly beautifuls' here, but if you've read a million Uncuts, NMEs, Mojos and piles of music bios like I have, and you're listening to music well beyond the perimeters of the mainstream, you might find the endless descriptions of the (torturous) creative process and Eve's sound experiments a bit of a slog.
But for readers unfamiliar with the creative process, the music industry, and the music that Eve is making, the descriptions are great.
I really liked the story about Christopher and the model village, which becomes the focal point of the book. It has more than a whiff of British whimsy that reminds me of Tom Cox's Villager, which can only be a good thing.
But as much as I enjoyed the Robert Johnson selling his soul at the crossroads, Faustian pact idea that is the premise of the book, I just couldn't get on with the rabbit as narrator, and whenever the rabbit started in on philosophising about life as a spectral familiar and the demon's attempts to win Eve's soul, I lost interest, which is why the book gets 3 instead of 4 stars.
October 19, 2025
Beautifully written and a great story, if achingly slow sometimes. I’d have liked an even stronger sense of our protagonists rabbityness throughout.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews