Shadow Girls

A gripping novel combining psychological suspense with elements of the ghost story, Shadow Girls is a literary exploration of girlhood by Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Jamrach's Menagerie.Set in a girl's school in 1960's Manchester, Shadow Girls it is a devastasting yet gripping look at just how susceptible teenage girls can be to both cruelty and the supernatural.My old school - I hated it but was filled with nostalgia when I looked round the old building and wanted to nail how dark and forbidding it had seemed fifty years ago. Shadow Girls, almost a ghost story, is the result. - Carol Birch.MARKET: Ali Smith; Katie Lowe (The Furies); Jim Crace; Francine Toon (Pine); Fiona Mozley (Elmet); Evie Wyld; Sarah Moss (Summer Water); Margaret Atwood (Cat's Eye); Donna Tartt (Secret History); Curtis Sittenfeld (Prep).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.Combining psychological suspense with elements of the ghost story, Shadow Girls is a literary exploration of girlhood by the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Jamrach's Menagerie. Manchester, 1960s. Sally, a cynical fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, is much too clever for her own good. When partnered with her best friend, Pamela - a mouthy girl who no-one else much likes - Sally is unable to resist the temptation of rebellion. The pair play truant, explore forbidden areas of the old school and - their favourite - torment posh Sylvia Rose, with her pristine uniform and her beautiful voice that wins every singing prize. One day, Sally ventures (unauthorised, of course) up to the greenhouse on the roof alone. Or at least she thinks she's alone, until she sees Sylvia on the roof too. Sally hurries downstairs, afraid of Sylvia snitching, but Sylvia appears to be there as well. Amidst the resurgence of ghost stories and superstition among the girls, a tragedy is about to occur, one that will send Sally further and further down an uncanny rabbit hole... Praise for Shadow Girls: 'A terrific evocation of a bygone Manchester girlhood, poignant and creepy by turns, by one of the most under-rated writers in England' D.J. Taylor 'Compulsively readable, Shadow Girls is an atmospheric, shape-shifting novel, part coming-of-age, part supernatural thriller. Birch renders the atmosphere of the sixties impeccably, and conveys most brilliantly the taut, complicated relationships between teenage girls with all their neediness, bravado and gullibility' Lesley GlaisterThe new ghost novel by the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Jamrach's Menagerie.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.A terrific evocation of a bygone Manchester girlhood, poignant and creepy by turns, by one of the most under-rated writers in EnglandCompulsively readable, Shadow Girls is an atmospheric, shape-shifting novel, part coming-of-age, part supernatural thrillerSlowly and superbly paints everyday life at an all-female school... Utterly grippingProbing the effects of buried trauma and the Freudian return of the repressed, Birch's achievement here is to give an authentic, arresting voice to a character who has little insight into the depths of her psycheThat unhappy girl is what really haunts the delusional and guilt-ridden Sally, through all the "almosts" of this novel. And those bruises are its real "heavy subject", subtly embedded in these clever, unnerving pages