Reasons She Goes to the Woods: LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2014

by Deborah Kay Davies

Overview

'Exquisite... To be marvelled at.' Guardian

Shortlisted for the Encore Award

Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction

Pearl can be very, very good. More often she is very, very bad. But she’s just a child, a mystery to all who know her. A little girl who has her own secret reasons for escaping to the nearby woods. What might those reasons be? And how can she feel so at home in the dark, sinister, sensual woods, a wonder of secrets and mystery?

Told in vignettes across Pearl’s childhood years, Reasons She Goes to the Woods is a nervy but lyrical novel about a normal girl growing up, doing the normal things little girls do.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781780743776
Publisher:	Oneworld Publications
Publication date:	02/06/2014
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Deborah Kay Davies won the Wales Book of the Year 2009 award with her first work of fiction, the short-story collection Grace, Tamar and Laszlo the Beautiful. When her debut novel, True Things About Me, came out in 2010, she was selected by BBC TV as one of the twelve best new British novelists. And when the novel was published in New York in 2011, Lionel Shriver chose it as her personal book of the year. Her second novel, Reasons She Goes to the Woods, was longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2014. She lives in Cardiff.
Deborah Kay Davies won the Wales Book of the Year 2009 award with her first work of fiction, the short story collection Grace, Tamar and Laszlo the Beautiful. When her debut novel, True Things About Me, came out in 2010, she was selected by BBC TV as one of the 12 best new British novelists. And when the novel was published in New York in 2011, Lionel Shriver chose it as her personal book of the year. She lives in Cardiff.

Editorial Reviews

09/15/2014
Davies's (True Things About Me) second novel chronicles the pre-teen and teen-age years of a troubled and often cruel girl named Pearl. Seen through her imaginative (hallucinatory?) eyes, the story takes the form of single-page episodes appearing only on the right hand page of the book, the left remaining virtually blank. Is Davies suggesting the need to take a breather between vignettes? Considering Pearl's gasp-inducing, hurtful acts and her own frequent heartbreak, this would be understandable. Pearl alternates between abandoning her baby brother, whom she calls The Blob, and being his supporter; between physically torturing her friends and craving them. Her negligent parents are helpless—the mother hobbled by demons and the loving father exhausted by Mom's madness. Raw, lyrical, sad, this haunting story packs a deceivingly strong punch. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

‘A rounded, complex portrait of growing-up that has an atmosphere all of its own.’

We Love This Book

‘Brutal, funny... One of those rare novels that is genuinely about sex, in all its irrationality and potential for self-destruction.’

author of We Need to Talk About Kevin Lionel Shriver

‘A poetic and strange novel, full of flair.’

Emerald Street

‘Exquisite...to be marvelled at.’

Guardian

‘Pearl is a marvellously contradictory creation, showing the cruelty in children as well as their neediness, their capacity for love and friendship... Davies’ novel reads almost like a prose poem.’

Independent on Sunday

‘Best for highbrow sun lounging...told with a gothic, sensual style that Angela Carter would be proud of.’

Grazia

‘A sexy, contrary book...also a story concerned with morality. The most sustained and challenging aspect of the narrative is its insistence about what a little girl is like.’

Times Literary Supplement

Praise for True Things About Me

‘In this wallop of a little novel... Ms. Davies writes with such spunk that you stay with her for much of the ride’ New York Times

From the Publisher

‘A spiky echo of Angela Carter, with whom Ms Davies at her best stands fair comparison... The language is fresh, the imagery striking...and Pearl herself is a rampant, compelling, fully-realised, wild-eyed, teary creation.’

The Scotsman

‘Dark, beautifully descriptive and rather haunting.’

Grazia Daily

‘Outstanding... Davies is a poet, and this is a poet’s novel in the very best sense – every word is pin-sharp and perfectly in its place.’

The Times

‘Outstanding... Davies is a poet, and this is a poet’s novel in the very best sense – every word is pin-sharp and perfectly in its place.’

The Times