GIRL A
by Abigail Dean (HarperCollins £14.99, 336 pp)
This story of a family held hostage and terrorised by their parents and the daughter who is the first to escape and alert the authorities is an assured and striking debut from a young lawyer.
With a gimlet eye for detail she tells the story of each of the six children, but it starts with the death of their mother in prison, seen through the eyes of Alexandra Gracie (Lex) the daughter who escaped and is known to the Press as Girl A.
The picture it paints of the torture the children suffered at the hands of their over-bearing, religious, fanatic father is sometimes so painful that it’s difficult to read.
Thrillers Spiked With Malice and Dread
Credit.Nishat Akhtar
Published Jan. 15, 2021Updated Jan. 18, 2021
It’s still dark! But here are some thrillers to help with all the time we are spending indoors.
The title of the Australian writer Jane Harper’s latest novel,
THE SURVIVORS (Flatiron, 374 pp., $27.99), refers to two things. The first is a sculpture memorializing a shipwreck whose ghostly remains lie off the coast of Evelyn Bay, a tiny summer community in Tasmania. The second are the traumatized, secrets-harboring residents left behind when a devastating storm killed three of the town’s young people 12 years ago.
After a long exile, Kieran Elliott has returned to Evelyn Bay with his girlfriend and their baby to help his parents move out of the family house. But it is a complicated homecoming. Kieran was indirectly responsible for two of the storm deaths one of the victims was his brother and there are those who will never forgive him. Also, there’s a new body to