Death and the Seaside

Book excerpt: Nearing thirty, with an abandoned literature degree and half-hearted dreams of becoming a writer, Bonnie Falls gives in to her parents’ insistence that she finally move out of their home and takes up residence in a shabby first-floor flat with a concrete garden. When her landlady takes an uncommon interest in her—and one of her unfinished stories—Bonnie’s aspirations are rekindled, and when Sylvia suggests the two of them take a summer holiday to a seaside town oddly similar to the one in which the story is set, Bonnie is quickly persuaded to accompany the enigmatic older woman. A tense exploration of power and vulnerability, obsession and manipulation, Death and the Seaside is a masterpiece of form and gripping psychological novel about the stories that we tell ourselves.