Cold Light

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 27/08/2012

Set in a small English town, Ashworth s second novel (after A Kind of Intimacy) offers an object lesson in the perils of concealing the past. For ten years, twenty-something Laura has kept mum about at least one dreadful secret: What really happened when her best friend Chloe drowned at age 14. The knowledge has crippled Laura s hopes for a meaningful life. She holds a menial job as a shopping center cleaner and lives alone, fearful that mutual friend Emma might expose her. In her first-person recollections of the fateful months preceding Chloe s death, Laura dwells perhaps overmuch on the minute details of her angst-ridden adolescence. Ashworth pulls no punches. Though some of the dark, British humor may be lost on an American audience, the author s narrative is revealing, timely, and damning of tabloid-media sensationalism.