The Pools - Softcover

Roberts, Bethan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1852424990 ISBN 13: 9781852424992

Publisher: Serpent's Tail, 2007

Synopsis

It is middle England, mid-1980s. It is the kind of place where nothing ever happens. Except something has happened. A sixteen year old boy called Robert had been killed, down by the pools. And half a dozen lives will come unravelled. There's Kathryn and Howard, Rob's parents. Kath has been making the best of her second marriage after the love of her life died young. Howard has been clinging onto a family life he hardly expected to have. There's Joanna, the teen queen of nowheresville. She's been looking for a way out, escape from her parents' broken marriage. She thought Rob might take her away from all this, but lately she's started to think Rob might have other plans. And then there's Shane, with the big hands and the fixation on Joanna. Bethan Roberts' strikingly assured debut novel subtly reveals the tensions and terrors that underpin apparently ordinary lives, and can lead them to spiral suddenly out of control. I know Shane's not coming. I sit on the seat of the twitchers. I know he's not coming. But I wait. I grip the seat until my fingers go dead, and I wait for him. Pink hoop earrings, pink pencil skirt. I'm ready, should he stride past, Walkman blasting. I'm ready, but I know he won't come. No one's seen him since that night. Not even me. Rooks scream in the spiky trees. Everything's frozen, even the air. It bursts in my lungs when I inhale. The only thing moving is the steam in the sky. It coughs out of the power station cooling towers. It never stops. I stretch my fingers out and let the blood flow back. Then I grip the seat again.

About this title

Review

A tense thriller that reminded me of Julie Myerson's Something Might Happen (Viv Groskop Eve)

Brilliantly illuminating... A beautifully understated debut (Easy Living)

A complex anatomy of a murder, The Pools brilliantly evokes the sickening recognition of a wasteful death. Bethan Roberts is a fearless writer whose first novel raises questions about fate and responsibility that remain with the reader long after the last page has been turned. A compelling debut (Louise Welsh)

An unsettling and disturbing tale of awakening sexuality and predatory parents (Patricia Duncker)

A wonderfully self-assured debut... There is a forbidding feeling throughout the novel - an almost audible hum of misgiving coming off the pages. Superb (Ruth Atkins The Bookseller)

A cool and relevant novel... an urban Cold Comfort Farm... expertly crafted (Sunday Express)

A sense of controlled menace broods over every scene, as if the book's tragic outcome were inevitableA sense of controlled menace broods over every scene, as if the book's tragic outcome were inevitable (Guardian)

A haunting glimpse of emerging adolescent sexuality and of adult lives wasted by grief... a convincing, haunting debut that evokes an uneasy and menacing Middle England (Time Out)

About the Author

Bethan Roberts was born in Oxford and brought up in nearby Abingdon. She has MAs from Sussex and Chichester Universities and teaches creative writing at Chichester and for the Open University. Roberts was awarded a Jerwood/Arvon Young Writers' Prize for The Pools. She lives in Brighton.

About this edition

• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1852424990
• ISBN 13: 9781852424992
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288