In the proposed final chapter of the unfinished Pictures and Conversations, Elizabeth Bowen intended to answer the question of whether there ‘is anything uncanny involved in the process of writing?’ For the many writers who appear in her fiction, writing certainly is an uncanny process, capable of mirroring the self and manipulating others. Markie, in To the North, writes on scraps of paper to enact his predatory aims; in The Death of Heart, St Quentin accuses Portia of using her diary to ‘precipitate things’. As Bowen puts the matter, for ‘the writer, writing is eventful; one might say it is in itself eventfulness’. While such uncanny eventfulness would seem to grant the writer an immense power, writing in Bowen’s novels – be it letters, diaries, or novels – often takes on a troubling life of its own. Markie and Portia eventually find themselves thwarted by the after-effects of their writing. Given the tendency of writing to dangerously stray, it is little wonder that so many of Bowen’s writers, such as Iseult Arble in Eva Trout, never complete their masterpieces.