Primrose Hill - Softcover

Falconer, Helen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571196136 ISBN 13: 9780571196135

Publisher: FABER & FABER INC *, 1999

Synopsis

Now in paperback, the "firecracker debut" (Kirkus) about London teenagers contemplating murder. After his mother takes another beating from her drug-dealing boyfriend, Danny decides to do something about it--commit murder. Should his best friend Si get involved? Seen through Si's eyes, this moral dilemma and ultimate test of friendship comes alive--fraught, exhilarating, shocking

About this title

About the Author:

Helen Falconer, a native Londoner, has been a journalist at several major newspaper in England. She now lives in rural Ireland.

From Publishers Weekly:

Originally published in England, this colorful, often harrowing debut pits teenage Si and his best friend, Danny, against Danny's mother Josie's abusive, drug-dealing boyfriend, turning what the boys have termed a 1990s-style summer of love into a summer of violence and revenge. Suddenly, their school break isn't just about hanging out on London's Primrose Hill. The boys hatch a desperate plan to kill the man who has beaten Josie with a baseball bat, stabbed her with scissors and kept her addicted to and begging for drugs. The one diversion from these grim preoccupations is Eleanor, a 15-year-old whom Si meets on the hill. Both a rich, flirtatious delinquent who eagerly joins in the murder plot and a troubled child with a dark secret, Eleanor is a stubborn, perplexing character who steals every scene she's in and occupies a good deal of space in Si's head besides. The dialogue doesn't sound a single wrong note, but the characters act on a limited stage: Si's mother, Louise, is pregnant with a baby whose benign but lazy father, Andy, has "done a runner," much like Si's own father, who decided he was gay and deserted the family shortly after his only son was born. The most moving aspect of the story is Si's presence at the birth of his baby sister and his quasi-fatherly devotion to her and his mother; less effective is Danny's single-minded protectiveness of his own mother. Though the novel purports to be about the "thin lines... between doing the right things and doing the wrong thing... between life and death," it doesn't quite measure up to those lofty aims--but its verve infuses the bleak events with intelligence and heart.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: FABER & FABER INC *
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0571196136
• ISBN 13: 9780571196135
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224