The Killing Jar
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Five-year-old Kerrie-Ann Hill has an unusual neighbour. Mrs Ivanovich collects butterflies and she shows Kerrie-Ann how to catch them, take care of them, and evenhow to kill them using a jar and some funny-smelling liquid. Kerrie-Ann loves looking at these beautiful, delicate creatures, and imagines them flying free...
This is Kerrie-Ann's story. She doesn't know who her father is, and her mother is a junkie. By the age of ten, she's selling drugs at school. By twelve, she's been beaten up by a customer, hidden stolen guns, done time in a girls' home, and already has a taste for whizz.
And then there's Mark - her only true friend and the one person she can trust. Their friendship turns into a powerful love and together they are invincible. But in their world it's easy to lose control. On the drug-riddled estate with an atmosphere as lethal as a killing jar, it seems that Kerrie-Ann doesn't stand a chance. Unless she can make use of what Mrs Ivanovich taught her all those years ago.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The thrills and horrors of life as a young drug dealer play out against a backdrop of suburban decay in Monaghan's sharp-edged debut. The narrator, Kerrie-Ann, nicknamed "Kez," lives in Nottingham public housing with her heroin-addicted mother. By the age of 10, Kez is working as a drug courier for her mother's dealer boyfriend. By 13, she's had an abortion and is dropping Ecstasy; when her mother leaves, she's making enough money on her own to take care of her younger brother, Jon, and to save money for a better life. In the meantime, she shacks up with another dealer, Mark, whose tenderness transforms into violent possessiveness as his heroin addiction gets the better of him. Though Kez's lifestyle involves her with crimes worse than dealing drugs, her principled discipline and vulnerability are what make the reader root for her. Monaghan writes in a heavy but readable dialect ("any normal gell'd of talked to her mam about it"; and a liberal spattering of "owt," "summat" and "wi") that fans of Irvine Welsh will recognize. This novel could have easily fallen into clich s of juvenile delinquency and teenage disaffection, but the stark material and unsentimental prose make for a wrenching look at devotion, crime and violence.
