The Ophelia Girls

(Hardback)

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A mother's secret past collides with her daughter's present in this intoxicating novel from Jane Healey, the author of The Animals at Lockwood Manor. In the summer of 1973, teenage Ruth and her four friends are obsessed with pre-Raphaelite paintings, and a little bit obsessed with each other. They spend the scorching summer days in the river by Ruth's grand family home, pretending to be the drowning Ophelia and recreating tableaus of other tragic mythical heroines. But by the end of the summer, real tragedy has found them. Twenty-four years later, Ruth is a wife and mother of three children, and moves her family into her still-grand, but now somewhat dilapidated, childhood home following the death of her father. Her seventeen-year-old daughter, Maeve, is officially in remission and having been discharged from hospital can finally start acting like a 'normal' teenager with the whole summer ahead of her. It's just the five of them until Stuart, a handsome photographer and old friend of her parents, comes to stay. And there's something about Stuart that makes Maeve feel more alive than all of her life-saving treatments put together . . . As the heat of the summer burns, how long can the family go before long-held secrets threaten to burst their banks and drown them all Set between two fateful summers, The Ophelia Girls is a visceral, heady exploration of illicit desire, infatuation and the perils and power of being a young woman.

Reviews

This is a potent, mesmerising portrait of girlhood desire, betrayal, beauty and death, sensuously written and passionately told -- Emma Stonex, author of The Lamplighters
A knowingly put together page-turner; a potent blend of art, beauty, awakening desire and mortality that seduces the reader as much as the cast * Daily Mail *
A bruising and beautiful novel about girlhood and desire. Set over two heady summers, The Ophelia Girls perfectly captures the power and vulnerability of being a teenage girl. Within its flower-strewn pages, girls float carelessly down rivers and fall in love with devastating consequences. It's an immersive and intoxicating summer read with the long-lasting feel of a classic. I was captivated by it -- Molly Aitken, author of The Island Child
Set over the course of two stifling British summers, The Ophelia Girls is a dreamy exploration of the interior life of teenage girls and the tangled relationship between mothers and daughters. In her hypnotic prose Jane Healey captures the slipperiness of the adolescence experience, the thirst young women have for independence, and the sometimes perilous ways they attempt to define themselves. A siren song of a novel, The Ophelia Girls seduces as much as it disturbs -- Ellie Eaton, author of The Divines
The Ophelia Girls is a novel saturated with beauty, menace, longing, secrets -- and with passions deep enough to drown in. It's a sinister, suspenseful page-turner that gripped me tightly and still hasn't fully let go -- Clare Beams, author of The Illness Lesson
This is a vivid, sensuous novel that captures the feelings of passion and devastation of girls on the brink of womanhood and life itself, and I cant recommend it enough -- Anna Bailey, bestselling author of Tall Bones
I absolutely adored this exquisite novel. It is dark and sultry and beautiful and terrible. All the good stuff. The characters get tangled in so many complex strands of love, secrecy and obsession. And it perfectly captures the brilliance and terror of being a teenage girl -- Hazel Barkworth, author of Heatstroke
A compelling story of teenage innocence and infatuation, blended with the illicit desires and murky intentions of adults * Woman's Weekly *
This novel has a sinewy, enchanting style that draws us into the reverie-like world of the river and its dangers and, like the characters it has so bewitched, never lets us go: it's powerful stuff * The Big Issue *

Author Bio

Jane Healey studied English Literature at Warwick University. She was short-listed for the 2013 Bristol Short Story Prize, the 2014 Costa Short Story Award, the 2016 Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the 2017 Penguin Random House WriteNow mentoring programme. The Ophelia Girls is her second novel. Her first, The Animals at Lockwood Manor, was published in 2020 and won the HWA Debut Crown Award. She lives in Edinburgh.