True Things About Me

(Paperback, Main)

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Description

He was there with me. His hair shining in the moonlight. I thought that now we could be together. His blue eyes were strangely black. Your turn, he whispered, and lifted me up. I tried to lock my arms around his neck, but he was immensely strong. He held me away from him out beyond the rail, and then he let me go into the dark.

When the narrator of True Things About Me meets a charismatic man at work, they quickly begin to build a life together. But what lies beneath is a relationship immersed in lust and obsession. When her lover's visits become increasingly erratic, and she takes a decision to delve into his past, their relationship begins to unravel.

With great honesty and unexpected humour, Deborah Kay Davies takes us deep into the mind of her unforgettable protagonist, and in doing so asks us to consider seriously what we might sacrifice for our desires.

Reviews

* Brutal, funny ... One of those rare novels that is genuinely about sex, in all its irrationality and potential for self-destruction Lionel Shriver * Affecting and well described...[with] searing observations of human behaviour -- Joanna Briscoe Guardian * Glinting with pitch-black humour, Davies's razor-edged style has a lucidity and ferocity that makes much "literary" prose sound like soggy mush Independent * Exquisitely written Daily Express * A little book that packs a huge punch...Davies handles the horrifying climax with control and assurance The Times * A kind of hybrid of Janice Galloway's The Trick is to Keep Breathing, Maggie O'Farrell's My Lover's Lover, and one of Sophie Hannah's twisted stories. Memorable, troubling and surprisingly funny in places Financial Times * Davies is causing a stir in the books world Observer * If darkness has brilliant, this is it -- Tom Adair Scotsman * Andrew Motion has complained - at least, I assume it was a complaint - that so few entries for the Man Booker Prize this year dared to write seriously about sex. What a shame, then, that one book that did so with coruscating verve and zest failed to trouble the judges. True Things About Me (Canongate) by the Welsh writer Deborah Kay Davies (right) is also a first novel: a category absent from the 2010 long-list. Her first-person narrative of a young woman's obsessive, destructive affair has an unsettling pitch-black wit that truly makes its voice stand out from the bland MOR murmur of most "literary" fiction. Still, the Booker is not the only prize: other juries, take note -- Boyd Tonkin Independent * Like nothing I've ever read...full of unexpected beauty and humour. It's like The Bell Jar for the twenty-first century Trezza Azzopardi * Every now and then a novel will come along and blast the scales off your eyes. True Things About Me did more than that - it blew me to pieces. Brilliant. Disturbing. Deborah Kay Davies deserves to scoop every prize going Helen Walsh * Compelling and completely convincing, True Things About Me has a kind of Greek tragedy inexorability about it which made my scalp tingle and palms sweat Niall Griffiths * This is the real deal. It's as dark and humorous as life itself Joe Stretch * reading this book felt like flipping open the dirty, sharp lid of a buried jewellery box and finding the world reflected from minuscule gems that turn out to be shards of glass eyes, signalling a truth you'd rather not know...She is a writer born to awaken us [and] her debut novel...is unreservedly to be admired The Scotsman * If darkness has brilliance, this is it Tom Adair * A tough read but worth the effort. -- Collin Waters Sunday Herald * A brutal story in brutal prose. Guardian Saturday Review * unputdownable and unforgettable Cambria Magazine

Author Bio

Deborah Kay Davies started writing and publishing when she was a mature student at Cardiff University. Her first collection of stories, Grace, Tamar and Laszlo the Beautiful, won the 2009 Wales book of the Year Award. She has also published a collection of poems, Things You Think I Don't Know.