The Dead House
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Highly Commended by the Sheffield Children's Book Award 2010.
Lauren and her aunt and uncle are returning to London after years living away in Cornwall. For Lauren it is a return to the sight of a terrible family tragedy and a house full of ghosts. When she was six years old her mum and little sister were murdered in their home ... and Lauren's dad was put in prison for the crime. Now she is living a stone's throw from her old house, and despite her trepidation, Lauren is curious to know who lives there now, and how the house will make her feel. When she becomes friendly with Nathan, the son of the new owners, she finds herself back at the scene of so many nightmares...of memories, but also of things forgotten. Lauren blocked out a lot of that fateful day, but now that she's older, things are coming back to her...things that could mean her dad is innocent, not guilty of murder. After all these years of hating him Lauren now faces the prospect of loving her dad once again. But is it that easy?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Told through a retrospective collection of found evidence surrounding the deaths of several students in a boarding school fire, Kurtagich's debut novel is deeply disturbing and fraught with emotion. Carly and Kaitlyn Johnson are two separate personalities sharing the same body and have done so for as long as either can remember. After the death of their parents, Carly and Kaitlyn's time is split between treatment in a psychiatric hospital and studying at a British boarding school; it's at school where their comfortable dissociative routine begins to unravel under mysterious and arcane circumstances. Their slowly expanding group of friends houses a traitor, and Kaitlyn is left to search for Carly after her alter ego's persona disappears. Psychological self-indulgence wars with fascinating introspection as diary entries and transcripts of video footage and therapy sessions chronicle a teenager's descent into and out of madness. Contrived tension and a haphazard time line ring a few discordant notes, but are balanced by insightful characterization and a detailed exploration of the importance of the emergent identity to the teenage self. Ages 15 up.
