Foxlowe
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A compulsive and chilling debut about a girl growing up in a cult
WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO LEAVE?
Green and Blue are sisters.
Foxlowe is home. Outside is Bad.
Green understands.
Why can’t Blue?
‘Will lure you in – then cut to the kill’ Guardian
‘Wonderfully tense’ Emerald Street
‘To read Foxlowe is not unlike wandering through Foxlowe itself on some long night: I felt never quite certain where the corridors might take me, nor whom I might meet on turning a corner; and in the final moments I found myself hurtling down a flight of steps into the dark’ Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent
‘The ending is like a punch to the throat’ The i
Reviews
‘Will lure you in – then cut to the kill’ Sarah Perry, Guardian
‘Meticulously conceived and darkly compelling. Underpinning the claustrophobic horror is a parable of unchecked sibling rivalry, a girl’s desperate need for motherly love and the knotted consequences of childhood trauma’ Observer
‘A richly atmospheric Gothic debut . . . meticulous, intimate and compelling. Foxlowe may give up its secrets, in the end, but it never gives up its hold’ Irish Times
‘An accomplished debut . . . the ending [is] like a punch to the throat’ Independent
‘Unsettling and persuasive, impressively well executed and, at the last, utterly disturbing. I'm still flinching away from thinking about the final scene’ Alison Flood, Lovereading
‘In hypnotic and compelling prose, Foxlowe weaves a darkly disturbing gothic spell’ Essie Fox
‘Mesmerising, gripping and beautifully written. It completely sweeps you up from beginning to end. I loved it' Kate Hamer, author of The Girl in the Red Coat
‘Wasserberg has a strong and distinctive voice and this is an excellent debut’ Clare Mackintosh, author of I Let You Go
‘An extraordinary, astonishing story of a girl's longing for motherly love. Beautifully harrowing, and powerfully haunting, it is the most heartbreaking tale I have read this year’ Liz Nugent, author of Unravelling Oliver
‘I thoroughly enjoyed this vivid and claustrophobic coming-of-age debut’ Tasha Kavanagh, author of Things We Have in Common
‘Dissonant, haunting and superbly atmospheric. An immensely subtle and profoundly affecting debut’ Paraic O’Donnell, author of The Maker of Swans
About the author
Eleanor Wasserberg is a graduate of the Creative Writing Programme at the University of East Anglia. Originally from Staffordshire, she now lives in Norwich.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Like falling under a beautiful witch’s spell, Foxlowe took us on a disorienting but thrilling journey. Our narrator is Green, a damaged young girl born into the Family—a cult housed in a decaying English manor. Green has never known any other life, but her stories and memories make it clear that her upbringing has been frightfully lonely and unusually cruel. First-time novelist Eleanor Wasserberg brilliantly conjures a sinister atmosphere, keeping us on edge as the community starts to implode and the children find their way through the rubble.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Wasserberg's absorbingly creepy debut, a young girl grows up in an isolated commune at the edge of a Stonehenge-like group of standing stones. Born in the decaying old mansion that is the home of a "ragtag group" called the Family, the girl known only as Green tells her story from her own limited point of view, leaving the reader to infer much that the narrator can't understand. It's a literary perspective much like that of Emma Donoghue's Room, and used to equally chilling effect here. Green's troubled mother, Freya, one of the group's founders, alternately smothers her daughter with affection and punishes her in grisly ways to get rid of "the Bad." When a baby the Family names Blue is brought in from the feared outside world, Green is wracked with jealousy, and the stage is set for the downfall of the already distressed commune. Though the ending of the novel is violent, that horror arises naturally out of what precedes it. The narrator's voice is equal parts naive and wise; Wasserberg has a gift for allowing the reader into this world inch by inch while playing up its claustrophobic nature, as well as the aspects that make Green susceptible to its enchantments.)
