The Girl Below - Softcover

Zander, Bianca

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062108166 ISBN 13: 9780062108166

Publisher: William Morrow & Company, 2012

Synopsis

A powerful and truly haunting debut novel from Bianca Zander with a spine-tingling hint of the gothic and supernatural, The Girl Below enthralls with a strange magic akin to the works of Audrey Niffenegger, Haruki Murakami, and Sarah Waters. Zander's novel is a story of parents and children; of love, regret, and second chances. When a young English woman, recently returned to London after a ten-year absence, finds herself slipping back into her childhood, she must solve the mysteries of her dysfunctional family--and unearths disturbing secrets that could shatter everything she believes about who she is and her place in the world.

About this title

Review:

"I just loved THE GIRL BELOW--it's so real and moving, so funny and smart, so sharp and artful. In every sense, Bianca Zander is a fantastic writer, and I'm recommending this magical novel to all my friends."--Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times bestselling author of Prep and American Wife

"The mystery at the core of this beautifully crafted novel was so compelling that I couldn't sleep until I finished it. . . . This is a wonderful, surprising and accomplished debut novel."--Marianne Elliott, author of Zen Under Fire

"Sharp, incisive, funny, THE GIRL BELOW is an intoxicating read. Combining gritty coming-of-age realism with time-travelling weirdness, Zander's writing brings the genius of Murakami to mind."--Sarah Laing, author of Coming Up Roses and Dead People's Music

"Zander's debut brims with truth; her accuracy of detail and way with words can be dizzying. This is a nuanced, complex portrait of contemporary female subjectivity."--Samuel Park, author of This Burns My Heart

"A terrific read -- the sort of book you don't want to put down, and then stays with you when you do . . . Zander works the entwined themes of estrangement and strangeness beautifully."--New Zealand Herald

"[A] well-crafted novel whose emotional impact will linger after the final page."--Publishers Weekly

From the Back Cover:

Suki Piper is a stranger in her hometown. . . .

After ten years in New Zealand, Suki returns to London, to a city that won't let her in. However, a chance visit with Peggy--an old family friend who still lives in the building where she grew up--convinces Suki that there is a way to reconnect with the life she left behind a decade earlier. But the more involved she becomes with Peggy's dysfunctional family, including Peggy's wayward sixteen-year-old grandson, the more Suki finds herself mysteriously slipping back in time--to the night of a party her parents threw in their garden more than twenty years ago, when something happened in an old, long-unused air-raid shelter. . . .

A breathtaking whirlwind of mystery, transgression, and self-discovery, Bianca Zander's The Girl Below is a haunting tale of secrets, human frailty, and dark memory that heralds the arrival of an extraordinary new literary talent.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0062108166
• ISBN 13: 9780062108166
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352