Excerpt from Melmoth by Sarah Perry, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

'Of course,' she says. 'Of course it's me,' and goes in. Follow her in, and what you will see is this: the small dark flat, densely packed with furniture, which jostles, like condemned cattle in a crate; the white walls entirely obscured by prints, by photographs of family long past remembering, by certificates of forgotten achievements which were never any use, and blotted watercolours of ships in the dock. On each surface useless ugly objects of some kind: dried flowers colonised by spiders, matryoshka dolls, a porcelain elephant lacking his trunk. Lying beneath these, prostrate in defeat, are embroidered mats, doilies of cheap machine lace in polyester thread, and scraps of Indian fabric; there is above it all the scent of cheap incense, sandalwood; the air is dim, because the curtains are drawn, and because it is full of dust and smoke. A silent television in the corner puts a fretful blue light against the wall. It is all so wholly out of keeping with Helen – with her neat unadorned clothes, her smooth greying hair and swift calm gait – that I daresay you're taken aback. But if you open the door along the passage – there, to your right: white-painted, plain – you would see a room, which is also white-painted, plain. A narrow bed, and a dressing-gown hanging from the back of the door. A small plain desk, and a small plain chair; a narrow wardrobe, in which a modest number of modest outfits hang, and beneath them, three modest pairs of shoes. Here Helen sleeps, eats, and studies: perfects her transitive verbs in German, attempts to master the fifteen patterns of Czech declension. She does not listen to music. The walls and the mattress are bare.

In the dim hall she sets down her satchel. 'Helen? I said, is that you?' – and there is her companion, waddling on bowed legs, the joints of her hips worn down, splayed and weak like those of a baby; dependent these days on an aluminium frame, which catches against the carpet and in doing so is volubly cursed. She is in black, this woman, many layers of it, the layers containing the detritus of a week's meals, and the scent of sandalwood, talc, and sweat. She is decked in garnet, in cheap black chips of it, on her ears and fingers, and in a brooch on her breast which glitters like a smashed black plate. This is Albína Horáková: ninety years old, malicious, unkind, devoted to sentimental opera and Turkish Delight. Helen takes in a breath and says, 'Yes, it is me. It is always me, and never anyone else. Have you eaten?'

'I have eaten.' The women survey each other with a depth of dislike plumbed an inch deeper each day. Helen – rootless, not permitting herself the comfort of a home – had ended one brief tenancy in a dreary room in a stranger's house, and sought another. Karel had said, 'There's Albína Horáková, I suppose, always looking for a lodger. They only ever last a month or so. Dreadful old bitch – nobody can stand her, except Thea of course – but quite entertaining in her way, and keeps herself locked away up there with her soap operas and her cakes.' Then he'd given Helen a look of calculating appraisal, which was amused, but not unkind, and said, 'Perhaps it might suit you, having a cellmate you don't like.' A slip of paper was handed over, the call was made – and now, here we are, thinks Helen. Albína has seeped into the fabric of the apartment like a stain. Her scent is in the teacups, in the laundry powder, in the leaves of the dictionaries on the shelves. Helen endures it all as she endures every discomfort, every hard thing: patiently, and as her just reward.

'Well, then,' says Helen, awaiting some jibe (regarding the drabness of her clothes, possibly; the narrowness of her life, or her idiotically poor Czech), but none is forthcoming.

Excerpted from Melmoth by Sarah Perry. Copyright © 2018 by Sarah Perry. Excerpted by permission of Custom House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.