Cold Boy's Wood

(Paperback)

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Description

Fusing the ghost story with sharp, psychological insight, this is a brilliant and timely novel about loneliness, buried secrets and the havoc they play on the mind from Booker-shortlisted author Carol Birch. Did you hear Big landslip over by Ercol. Last night. The road into Gully's closed off. They found a body. Got police tape. All that stuff. They only do that for murder, don't they Murder! A body has been uncovered in a mudslide just outside the village of Andwiston. In the pub they talk of murder, but Dan sometime mechanic, constant drunk is finding it hard to sift through his jumbled memories. Watching him from the dark is Lorna, a lost soul living in the woods, haunted by ghosts and a vision from her childhood: a cold boy standing alone in Gallinger's field. Fusing the ghost story with sharp, psychological insight, Cold Boy's Wood is an arresting, timely novel about loneliness, buried secrets and the havoc they play on the mind. 'A naturally literary writer who can, with a simple image, evoke the deepest emotion' Guardian 'A haunting murder mystery, Cold Boy's Wood is also a double portrait of damaged souls' Sunday Times Crime Club 'Fusing the supernatural with the psychological, Birch's story is, at its heart, a human one' Big Issue 'Her prose has an irresistible vigour... Her words sing on the page' Financial Times

Reviews

'At once elusive and intense, this suspenseful psychological mystery teems with ghosts from the past as a body is unearthed in a rural village' LoveReading. * LoveReading *
Although a haunting murder mystery, Cold Boy's Wood is also a double portrait of damaged souls: Lorna, who lives rough, and Dan, an alcoholic mechanic adopted by stray cats. Few crime novels are so moving * The Times Crime Club *
A beautifully written story of ghosts, loneliness and buried secrets * Choice Magazine *
PRAISE FOR CAROL BIRCH: 'Birch is a naturally literary writer who can, with a simple image, evoke the deepest emotion' Guardian. 'Carol Birch's fiction continues to stretch bodies and minds to breaking point... Marvellous and terrifying' Sunday Times. 'One of the best stories I've ever read; an extraordinarily good and completely original book' A.S. Byatt, on Jamrach's Menagerie. 'Her prose has an irresistible vigour... Her words sing on the page' Financial Times. 'Her candid northern voice cuts sadness free of sentimentality and finds intensity and drama in the everyday' * The Times *

Author Bio

Carol Birch is the award-winning writer of twelve novels, including Jamrach's Menagerie, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2011. Her first novel, Life in the Palace, won the David Higham Award for Fiction (Best First Novel of the Year), and her second novel, The Fog Line, won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Born in Manchester, she now lives in Lancaster.