Girl A: The Sunday Times and New York Times global best seller, an astonishing new crime thriller debut novel from the biggest literary fiction voice of 2021

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And there's the rub. Are siblings who grow up together with each fighting to survive, really all going to be close? Sibling dynamics are never sunshine and roses in any family and throw in the abuse in Girl A, in which children are subjected to horrific psychological and physical abuse, and the relationships get very murky indeed. This is the first book I have read by Edna O’Brien. Little did I know before listening to GIRL that she would turn out to be such a brilliant author.

Another reviewer asserted that as important a story as this is, Edna O'Brien isn't the one to tell it, suggesting an 88-year-old white Irish lady can't or shouldn't assume the voice of a Nigerian teenager. Bullshit. Bullshit. O'Brien has been writing about trauma, injustice, the plight of abused, forgotten, compromised women and girls for sixty years. She writes despair, rage and redemption with greater vision, compassion, and universality that any living writer I have read. Her Author's Notes reveal the great lengths O'Brien went to in her quest to make this story adhere as closely to the truth as possible. This is not cultural appropriation, this is a writer who has devoted her career to telling the stories of the most disadvantaged and silenced so that they will be heard, over and over again. The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup". The Guardian. 22 January 2021 . Retrieved 25 January 2021.Dean is 32 now and working on her second novel, but continues in her role at Google. These days, she’s enjoying the law. “I didn’t think about stopping, to be honest. Working with contracts and words all day is, for me, complementary to writing. Legal work forces you to think about every word in every sentence, and how they might be interpreted, which is helpful.” I didn’t connect with Lex on any level; I just couldn’t warm to her, and even found it hard to have any degree of sympathy. Which, given the subject matter, is quite an unusual statement to make. The same is true of her siblings, who just didn’t ever become real to me for some reason. Everything felt really detached. Girl A is a novel I'll never forget and am glad I read. It reminded me that the worst things I can do is also one of the easiest--to look away. Girl A is a powerful and gripping reminder of why I (and you) shouldn't do that. An absolute must read. This crushingly intimate drama occupies a space barely larger than a bedroom in the rundown council house where much of the story unfolds. Even on its few ventures outside, the location filming is delivered in tight closeups, the environment beyond the figures little more than colourful smeary blurs of light. You would hardly know it was shot in Glasgow. Sundays are all about books and coffee, who's with me? The Archives The Archives Search by Category

This is as harrowing and haunting a book I have read since 2009 and Uwem Akpan's short story collection Say You're One of Them, set throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Edna O'Brien's Girl is the nominally fictional horror story of young girls enslaved by Boko Haram, the Islamic terrorist group that still holds sway in northeastern Nigeria. Girl A by Abigail Dean will be published in Australia by Harper Collins and available from 20 January 2021. The story opens with Lex Gracie (Girl A) having been made executive of her mother’s will after her mother dies in prison. Lex and her siblings are infamous for unpleasant reasons: they were held captive in their home, abused and starved by their parents. Their father ended his own life when Lex escaped aged 15 and raised the alarm. Their mother ended up in prison.

Girl A

Dean] skillfully brings the complicated relationships among the siblings as well as the secrets they share into dramatic relief. This assured psychological thriller marks Dean as a writer to watch." - Publishers Weekly And then she does something magical: make us twin with the stunned and traumatized Maryam as she reverts to sheer animalistic survival, trying to see her way to the light. There is a certain mixed-up and frenetic quality to this book as Maryam switches from reality to a dreamlike stance, from past to present. Throughout her ordeal, which includes a harrowing account of a woman stoned alive and a gang rape, we—the readers—are forced to bear witness helplessly. Qui, Maryam e le altre 274 ragazze vennero schiavizzate, costrette ad appagare militari arrapati, a cucinare, a pulire, a pregare un dio sconosciuto, a subire botte, umiliazioni, stupri di gruppo, e matrimoni combinati.