A sometimes uncomfortable yet utterly compelling read that shreds and shatters conventional thought processes and feelings. The surprise when you open the book and start to read is your first hint of the distinctive tale to come. The author builds the story simply, slowly, sympathetically: the suggestions, the explorations, the forbidden, the twisted, all shaping and piecing together into something penetrating and provocative. As your mind starts to grasp the emerging picture, it buckles and contorts… will you ever fully understand? ~ Liz Robinson
Pearl can be very, very good. More often she is very, very bad. But she's just a child, a mystery to all who know her. A little girl who has her own secret reasons for escaping to the nearby woods. What might those reasons be? And how can she feel so at home in the dark, sinister, sensual woods, a wonder of secrets and mystery?
Praise for True Things About Me 'In this wallop of a little novel ... Ms. Davies writes with such spunk that you stay with her for much of the ride New York Times
'Brutal, funny ... One of those rare novels that is genuinely about sex, in all its irrationality and potential for self-destruction' Lionel Shriver
'Outstanding... With black humour and heartrending accuracy. Davies is a poet, and this is a poet's novel in the very best sense - every word is pin-sharp and perfectly in its place' The Times
'A rounded, complex portrait of growing-up that has an atmosphere all of its own' We Love This Book
'Exquisite... to be marvelled at.' The Guardian
'A spiky echo of Angela Carter, with whom Ms Davies at her best stands fair comparison... The language is fresh, the imagery striking... and Pearl herself is a rampant, compelling, fully-realised, wild-eyed, teary creation.' The Scotsman
'A sexy, contrary book... also a story concerned with morality. The most sustained and challenging aspect of the narrative is its insistence about what a little girl is like' TLS
'A poetic and strange novel, full of flair' Emerald Street
Author
About Deborah Kay Davies
Deborah Kay Davies won the Wales Book of the Year 2009 award with her first work of fiction, the short story collection Grace, Tamar and Laszlo the Beautiful. When her debut novel, True Things About Me, came out in 2010, she was selected by BBC TV as one of the 12 best new British novelists. And when the novel was published in New York in 2011, Lionel Shriver chose it as her personal book of the year. She lives in Cardiff.
