Vanishing Edge
Published on 6. March 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
160 pages
978-1-915444-84-4 (ISBN)
Description
One morning Apricot Jones wakes up to graffiti on her front door and a man in a black Jaguar who calls himself the Baglan Giant looking for her mum. Apricot wishes she were anywhere else, maybe heading over the horizon for a new life!
But her best friend Charlie knows she will always be here, cleaning up the mess the others leave behind.
Set between the Sandfields estate and the sea's edge, and structured by the omnipresent steelworks, this is a darkly comic tale of what it means to be alive, seventeen and living in Port Talbot.
A postcard to the love-hate relationship between best friends, and the love-hate relationship with your hometown. The tidal pull and push of family ties and dreams of escape.
A darkly comic first YA novel from the author of The Shark Caller and The Song Walker (shortlisted for the Carnegie 2024)
But her best friend Charlie knows she will always be here, cleaning up the mess the others leave behind.
Set between the Sandfields estate and the sea's edge, and structured by the omnipresent steelworks, this is a darkly comic tale of what it means to be alive, seventeen and living in Port Talbot.
A postcard to the love-hate relationship between best friends, and the love-hate relationship with your hometown. The tidal pull and push of family ties and dreams of escape.
A darkly comic first YA novel from the author of The Shark Caller and The Song Walker (shortlisted for the Carnegie 2024)
Reviews / Votes
'Astonishingly beautiful, slender and poetic novel that defied categorisation.' The Bookseller'A right of passage novel with characters as sharp and vivid as broken glass, prose that sparks like supercharged neon. Smart, funny, heartbreaking. This is Catcher in The Rye for South Wales.' Nicola Davies
'Zillah Bethell's writing is completely unique, very funny, yet very dark, with a whip-quick change in direction I didn't see coming. To read it is to be lead up to the top of a roller-coaster and pushed, hurtling, down the other side.' Lisa Heathfield
'Exceptionally beautiful. And dark and sad and funny and heartbreaking and life-affirming, all at the same time. Zillah Bethell has created her own mythology in a sulphur hazed landscape around Port Talbot, and one of the most original and authentic cast of characters I've read, especially narrators Apricot and Charlie.' Nicola Penfold
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cardiff
United Kingdom
Target group
Young adult
Interest Age: From 16 to 18 years
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 195 mm
Width: 125 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
148 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-915444-84-4 (9781915444844)
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
Zillah Bethell was born in Papua New Guinea, spent her childhood barefoot playing in the jungle, and didn't own a pair of shoes until she came to the UK when she was eight. She read English at Wadham College, Oxford and lives in south Wales with her family. Zillah has published three adult novels on subjects ranging from depression to the Paris communes and artist Gwen John. Her work for children includes four middle-grade novels: A Whisper of Horses, The Extraordinary Colours of Auden Dare, The Shark Caller (shortlisted for the Blue Peter Book Award) and The Song Walker (shortlisted for the Yoto Carnegie Medal 2024)