Cold Light
Published on 19. January 2012
Book
Paperback/Softback
352 pages
978-1-4447-0776-2 (ISBN)
Description
I'm sitting on my couch, watching the local news. There's Chloe's parents, the mayor, the hangers on, all grouped round the pond for the ceremony. It's ten years since Chloe and Carl drowned, and they've finally chosen a memorial - a stupid summerhouse. The mayor has a spade decked out in pink and white ribbon, and he's started to dig.
You can tell from their faces that something has gone wrong. But I'm the one who knows straightaway that the mayor has found a body. And I know who it is.
This is the tale of three fourteen-year-old girls and a volatile combination of lies, jealousy and perversion that ends in tragedy. Except the tragedy is even darker and more tangled than their tight-knit community has been persuaded to believe.
Blackly funny and with a surreal edge to its portrait of a northern English town, Jenn Ashworth's gripping novel captures the intensity of girls' friendships and the dangers they face in a predatory adult world they think they can handle. And it shows just how far that world is willing to let sentiment get in the way of the truth.
You can tell from their faces that something has gone wrong. But I'm the one who knows straightaway that the mayor has found a body. And I know who it is.
This is the tale of three fourteen-year-old girls and a volatile combination of lies, jealousy and perversion that ends in tragedy. Except the tragedy is even darker and more tangled than their tight-knit community has been persuaded to believe.
Blackly funny and with a surreal edge to its portrait of a northern English town, Jenn Ashworth's gripping novel captures the intensity of girls' friendships and the dangers they face in a predatory adult world they think they can handle. And it shows just how far that world is willing to let sentiment get in the way of the truth.
Reviews / Votes
Ashworth's novel is bleak and gritty, painting an uncompromising portrait of teenage life... In the best possible way this novel is an uncomfortable read. * Lucy Scholes, Sunday Times * That most uncommon delight - a literary page-turner. * <i>Sunday Times</i> * Haunting...it is told by the hand of a true storyteller. * <i>Independent</i> * Award-winning Jenn Ashworth leavens a bleak but pacey story with dry, wry humour, resulting in an extraordinarily perceptive and beautifully written novel * <i>Sunday Express</i> * A psychological thriller of the first order. * <i>The Age</i>, Australia * A wonderful tale, beautifully told. * <i>Bella</i> * Remember teenage bitching and insecurity? This book will take you back there, except with more lies and gruesome murder. Scarily believable. * <i>Fabulous</i> * a chilling, blackly funny novel with a surreal edge about the intensity of teenage friendship. * <i>Grazia</i> * Another cleverly skewed tale told from the self-conscious perspective of an outsider... arrestingly observant... Ashworth's second book confirms that the first was no one-off... her talent could take her a long way * <i>Guardian</i> *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Hodder & Stoughton
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 197 mm
Width: 128 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
244 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4447-0776-2 (9781444707762)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Jenn Ashworth is the author of the novels A Kind of Intimacy, which won a Betty Trask Award, Cold Light, The Friday Gospels, Fell and Ghosted: A Love Story, which was shortlisted for the Portico Prize. In 2011, she was featured on BBC Two's The Culture Show as one of the twelve Best New British Novelists. She has also written a memoir-in-essays, Notes Made While Falling, which was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize. She lives in Lancashire and is a Professor of Writing at Lancaster University.