Книги автора: Caroline Smailes

Julie Myerson meets Ian McEwan in this gripping novel of family breakdown.Ana Lewis is trapped by her own expectations. Her intense relationship with fellow student Alex begins to crack beyond repair when she falls pregnant, and his subsequent withdrawal, emotionally and sexually are hard for Ana to bear. Eventually, following the birth of Pip and then Davie, Alex leaves Ana to a life of question and blame. Locked in her room for much of the time she woefully neglects her children, preferring instead to replay scenes from her life over and over, fighting the urge to blink for fear it should dissipate the memories.Told within the context of two black boxes, one Ana’s and one Pip’s, the story reveals the key factors that have contributed to this catastrophic breakdown of life. In Black Box 01 we meet Ana as she begins to deconstruct her life. She rails against Alex and his inability to love her, or to put her ahead of his domineering mother.Black Box 02 is Pip’s diary which details in a schoolgirl terms the neglect that both Pip and Davie have suffered. Pip talks of her mother’s deterioration, lack of cleanliness and of her mother’s obsessions. Pip and Davie communicate through finger sign language, as their mother demands silence. Davie retreats into his own world, permanently soiled and communicating only by sign, while Pip, fat and desperate, sneaks out of the house at night to have sex with a boy who hates her. Pip and Davie exist in parallel, with only Ana's bedroom door separating her from them. She does not want to see them. They are the present and Ana chooses to live in a past, continually raking over the ashes of a relationship that was never really hers.Accomplished and affecting, Caroline Smailes weaves together a catastrophic tale of mismatched lives.

In her third novel, acclaimed author of ‘In Search of Adam’ and ‘Black Boxes’ Caroline Smailes draws upon her own family history for a remarkable and unforgettable story of loss and redemption.Nina travels to Malta with her five-year-old son Christopher. She left the island at the age of nineteen to study at Liverpool University but fell pregnant and was disowned by her family. Following a car accident her relationship with her husband breaks down and she feels compelled to return home, taking her young son with her in the hope of reconciliation with her father and siblings.Once in Malta, strange things start to happen. Nina discovers that the island is full of souls in various stages of transition. Malta is the place where the dead all travel to before they pass over and she is visited by seven of them who, in turn, try to help her deal with the issues that have brought her to the island after so many years away.As Nina travels round Malta and learns more from each friendly spirit she begins to understand why she has really come back and is forced to face some startling truths which will haunt the reader long after they put the book down.Caroline Smailes built up a significant cult following with her first two books, with Like Bees to Honey she has written a remarkable story which will break her through to the mainstream audience she so richly deserves.

A taut and beautifully written debut novel by an exciting and accomplished new author.Motherless, rootless and unprotected, Jude Williams' childhood is fractured by the horror and experience of sexual abuse, forcing her to exist somewhere and nowhere in-between childhood and adulthood. Caught within the limitations of her own language and trapped within a family secret, Jude becomes the consequence of her mother's tragedy. As she moves through the 1980s, Jude's life is buffeted by choice and destiny and she collects experiences that layer her personal tragedy and plunge her into the darkest of worlds.