What They Do in the Dark: A Novel

By Amanda Coe

Book Overview

Like Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin and Donna Tartt's The Little Friend , this gripping novel pulls you toward its unimaginable climax and will leave you haunted and heartbroken. Spoiled but emotionally neglected Gemma, who seems to have everything, and semi-feral Pauline, who has less than nothing, are two very different ten-year-old girls growing up in a tough Yorkshire town in the 1970s. Pauline longs for the simple luxuries of Gemma's life: her neatly folded socks and her clean hair. Gemma, upset by her parent's breakup, loses herself in fantasies of meeting the child television star Lallie. When Lallie shoots a movie in their hometown, Gemma and Pauline grab the chance for their wildest dreams to come true. But the film becomes a terrible catalyst for the larger forces acting on the two girls, a dysfunctional adult world that trickles down to the children; and playground bullying escalates, with dreadful consequences.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393081389
• ISBN13: 9780393081381
• Release Date: March 2012
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.6" x 1.0" x 5.9"