My Best Friend

My Best Friend

by Laura Wilson (Author)

Synopsis

A quiet Suffolk village, 1944. Fourteen-year-old Gerald Haxton is a lonely boy who regards his still-born twin brother Jack as his only real friend. His mother, a famous children's writer, guards Jack's memory jealously, and Gerald, disturbed and unpopular, has no hope of ever measuring up to him. Playing in the woods near his home, Gerald discovers the body of his elder sister buried in a shallow grave. She has been beaten to death with a wooden stake and her boyfriend, a young GI, is hanged for the crime. London, 1995. As the country prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of VE Day, Gerald, who remains a loner, is nearing retirement. Obsessed by routine, he still talks to his dead brother, Jack. Surrounded by nostalgic artefacts at the TV prop-hire company where he works, he is constantly reminded of the past, and with it, his sister Vera's death. Hoping to escape his lonely existence, he takes to following Mel, the twelve-year-old daughter of a colleague. A few days later Mel, who bears a striking resemblance to Vera, disappears...

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 304
Publisher: Orion
Published: 01 Jul 2002

ISBN 10: 075284802X
ISBN 13: 9780752848020
Book Overview: Reissued alongside HELLO BUNNY ALICE in the terrific new cover style Laura Wilson always receives excellent reviews 'All the personalities are sharply drawn and the sense of inevitable doom slowly builds up as the story unfolds. The writing is spare and without a wasted word. This book has real class' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'MY BEST FRIEND shows present and past throwing revealing light on each other in a tale of psychological dread and suspense. Meticulously knitting together the many strands of an absorbing plot, Wilson effortlessly moves into the exclusive Rendell, Walters and Fyfield club' GUARDIAN 'Graceful and intelligent...one puts the book down eager for the next' SUNDAY TIMES 'Another of Wilson's brilliantly imagined, well-rendered time slips, in which events in 1944 and 1995 are painfully joined and resolved ... Wilson is precise and unsentimental with her period details, and writes movingly about squandered lives and opportunities lost and reclaimed. What's intriguing about this, her third novel, is hearing a writer find and exercise more and more of her true voice. It is distinctive, confiding and truthful. It is, thrillingly, like no one else's' LITERARY REVIEW

Media Reviews
REVIEWSWoman & Home - August issueVerdict - summer issue FEATURESCrimeTime - author article INTERNET EVENTS:Ottakar's Norwich - Nicked in Norwich 6thJuneEast Grinstead Lit Festival - 7th JuneCrimeScene at NFT - JulyHeffer's Ca
Author Bio
Laura Wilson was brought up in London and has degrees in English Literature from Somerville College, Oxford and UCL, London. She has worked briefly and ingloriously as a teacher, and more successfully as an editor of non-fiction books. She has written history books for children and is interested in history, particularly of the recent past, painting and sculpture, uninhabited buildings, underground structures, cemeteries and time capsules. She lives in Islington. Her first novel A LITTLE DEATH was shortlisted for both the CWA Ellis Peters and the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original. A THOUSAND LIES was shortlisted for the 2006 Duncan Lawrie Dagger. THE LOVER won the 2004 Prix du Polar Europeen for Best Crime Novel of the Year In Translation and was also shortlisted for the 2004 Gold Dagger and the Ellis Peters Award. In 2008, she won the Ellis Peters Award with her novel STRATTON'S WAR.