Digging to Australia
A Novel
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
An English girl takes a “tumble into a warped wonderland” when her Lewis Carroll-inspired journey unearths unexpected secrets, desires, and dangers (Los Angeles Times).
Trapped in suburban England, appalled by her parents, and desperately shy, twelve-year-old Jennifer Maybee is facing the terrors of adolescence alone. After reading Alice in Wonderland, she digs a hole in her backyard hoping to find what her mother calls the “topsy-turvy world of Australia.” Instead, led by a stray cat, Jennifer follows a secret pathway of a different sort.
On the other side of a tangle of bramble, Jennifer claims her own Wonderland: an empty playground, a deserted church, and an unattended graveyard. But Jennifer isn’t alone. She meets something close to a friend in Bronwyn, a girl burdened by family tragedy. However, it’s in a squatter named Johnny that Jennifer’s fantasies for a new life begin to bloom. He’s too charming, and too unaccountably sexy for Jennifer to listen to those nasty rumors that he might be responsible for the disappearances of other lonely girls. All Jennifer can do now is marvel at the mysteries to come.
From the Somerset Maugham Award–winning author, “dangerous secrets and sinister undertones power this uncommon coming-of-age tale” (Publishers Weekly). Jennifer Maybee, the protagonist of this “enormously enjoyable” novel of innocence lost, returns in Leslie Glaister’s Partial Eclipse (Nick Hornby).
“Perverting Wonderland into a place to smoke cigarettes and pry into other people’s secrets . . . this Alice is a match for any dark thing she encounters.” —Los Angeles Times
“Before Gillian Flynn, there was Lesley Glaister.” —Harper’s Bazaar
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dangerous secrets and sinister undertones power this uncommon coming-of-age tale. Writing with authority about adolescent insecurity, British author Glaister ( Honour Thy Father ) invests her theme with dramatic resonance, giving her slightly misfit antiheroine some responsibility for a final tragic event. When introduced, 12-year-old Jennifer is preoccupied with digging a tunnel in the garden of her English hometown. She imagines digging straight through to Australia, and thus escaping the dull life she leads with Mama and Bob. Soon after Jennifer commences this project in distancing, Mama drops a bombshell: Jennifer is not their daughter but their grandchild, born to their since-banished daughter. This announcement increases Jennifer's sense of alienation; she begins spending her free time in an abandoned church with a squatter named Johnny. More intrigued than frightened by Johnny's erratic disposition, Jennifer overlooks his possible role in the disappearances of local girls. But then her fantasies and ostensibly innocent lies take on some real consequences, which she must face. Glaister is a shrewd observer of domestic minutiae as well as emotional nuances. A masterful play of dark foreshadowing, the novel grips the reader's emotions as it moves to a haunting conclusion.