Before We Began

by TaniaUnsworth (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2006

  $3.27

  There was nowhere to go and nothing to do. Absolutely, definitely nothing to do. Even the matter of our boredom - held up and studied from all sides - had long since been exhausted as a topic of conversation. We sat around the shed in a vacant silence, broken only by the rustling of Julia's fingers as she picked at the insides of the sofa. All we ever do is sit around I complained. Sophie Barrett lives an odd, cautious, life until the morning she arrives to find her colleague has committed suicide in the basement of the shop where they both work. The death raises frightening, long-buried questions that Sophie can no longer afford to ignore. To answer them, she must return to the summer she was fourteen and a friendship between three very different girls, bound together by time, place and a life-changing secret. Julia, all energy and swagger, Nancy, lost in her own peculiar universe and Sophie, the follower, fearful and admiring. But while they dream, events are already in motion that will propel them towards tragedy, taking their innocence and threatening their friendship itself.

• Used

  Paperback
  2007

  $3.49

  Sophie Barrett lives an odd, cautious life, until the morning she arrives to find her colleague - a man she thought she understood - has committed suicide in the basement of the shop where they both work. The death - violent and apparently inexplicable - raises frightening, long-buried questions that Sophie can no longer afford to ignore. To answer them, she must return to the summer she was fourteen and a friendship between three very different girls, bound together by time and place and by a secret that will change their lives forever. In their small, muffled world of untidy bedrooms, back gardens and shabby meeting places, they wait for life to start. Julia, all energy and swagger, Nancy, lost in her own peculiar universe, and Sophie, the follower, fearful and admiring. But while they dream, events are already in motion that will propel them towards tragedy, taking their innocence and threatening their friendship itself. This is a gripping novel of guilt and longing and the grief of lost chances. Set in the strange, bewildered age between life past and life still to come, this compelling story explores the ways we lose - then find ourselves again.