With the ferocity of a mother tiger defending her cubs, fourteen-year-old Emmie Bean watches over her household: her amiable drunken father, her gaunt, evangelical old grandmother, her beautiful, wayward sister Alice and most precious of all, eight-year-old Oliver, who has the countenance of an angel and the ethical sense of a cobra. But with the arrival of new neighbours, the outside world intrudes into the isolated privacy of family life and Emmie's kingdom is no longer secure. Combining the guile of a young child with the desperation of adolescence, Emmie fights to stave off the changes- and the revelations- that growing up necessarily brings. Powerful, heart-rending, but never sentimental, Tortoise by Candlelight is a captivating excursion into the landscape of youth.
| ISBN: | 9781844084364 |
| Publication date: | 2nd November 2006 |
| Author: | Nina Bawden |
| Publisher: | Virago Press Ltd an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 240 pages |
| Series: | Virago Modern Classics |
| Genres: |
Modern and Contemporary Fiction Family Drama Literary Fiction Shorter Reads |