My Name Was Eden
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- ¥1,500
発行者による作品情報
‘A compulsive, didn’t-see-it-coming thriller’
ABIGAIL DEAN, international bestselling author of Girl A
One twin vanished. One twin reappeared.
*A Reader's Digest most anticipated book of the year*
‘A fantastic debut – unpredictable, tense and absorbing’ ROSE CARLYLE, #1 international bestselling author of The Girl in the Mirror
‘Dark and creepy . . . in the most compelling way. A proper page-turner’ KATY BRENT, bestselling author of How to Kill Men and Get Away with It
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When Eden is rescued from the lake, her mother Lucy has a second chance.
No one knows why the 14-year-old Eden almost drowned on her way home from school. But now she’s safe, Lucy can start being a good mother. The mother she should have always been, before the loss of Eden’s twin during the pregnancy consumed Lucy, all those years ago.
But when Eden wakes up in hospital, she claims that Eden isn’t her name. That her name is Eli – the name Lucy had reserved for the unborn twin.
Could it be that all this time, Lucy’s grief has been misplaced?
Eden, it seems, is the twin who’s really disappeared . . .
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‘Peels back the layers of family life . . . Had me reading far too late into the night’ TAMMY COHEN, author of The Wedding Party
‘A major new voice in psychological thrillers’ MINDY MEJIA, bestselling author of Everything You Want Me to Be
‘A deep dive into the messy emotions of love and mourning . . . A great read’ HELEN FIELDS, international bestselling author of The Institution
About the author
Eleanor Barker-White is a family support worker at HMP Erlestoke, Wiltshire. She holds a Creative Writing MA from Bath Spa, and is working on a second novel based on her experience of working with families affected by crime and criminal justice. Her first novel, My Name Was Eden, was inspired by more personal experiences: after a long ordeal with IVF Eleanor conceived twins, but due to Vanishing Twin Syndrome only one of her children survived. She was surprised to go on to have another child naturally. She tweets @Penningprose.
My Name Was Eden will be published by HarperNorth in the UK and William Morrow in the US in spring 2024.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Barker-White debuts with a flimsy domestic thriller about a British mother's unnerving experience with vanishing twin syndrome. Lucy Hamilton's life seems perfect: she lives in a large house on the outskirts of England's Lake District, where she dotes on her handsome, successful husband, James, and precocious 14-year-old daughter, Eden. Then tragedy strikes. After Eden nearly drowns in a small lake near the Hamiltons' home one afternoon, she loses consciousness and it's touch-and-go at the hospital as doctors attempt to revive her. When she finally wakes up, she tells the medical staff that her name is Eli—the same name Lucy chose for Eden's brother when she learned she was pregnant with fraternal twins. Due to a rare condition called vanishing twin syndrome, Eden absorbed Eli while both were still in Lucy's womb, but it now appears that the unborn boy has emerged from the depths of Eden's consciousness. Unlike his sister, he's less willing to keep family secrets and prone to violence. Chapters alternate between the perspectives of Lucy and a friend of Eden/Eli's, but Barker-White never quite utilizes the dueling viewpoints or Lucy's unsettling plight to ignite a properly nerve-shredding thriller, and the plot reversals are too obvious for things to take flight. This misses the mark.
