Little Face - Sophie Hannah

"High quality stuff" Literary Review.

Her husband David was supposed to be looking after their two-week-old daughter. But when Alice Fancourt walks into the nursery, her terrifying ordeal begins- for Alice insists the baby in the cot is a stranger she's never seen before.
With an increasingly hostile and menacing David swearing she must either be mad or lying, how can Alice make the polise believe her before it's too late.
A chilling psychological thriller about the lengths to which a mother will go to save her child, Little Face is impossible to put down; a stunning novel from a hugely talented author.

I very much enjoyed this novel. It is sinister, dark and keeps the reader guessing throughout. I had about five different theories as I was reading, each of which turned out to be wrong! The scenes of David's abuse of Alice were chilling and very realistic and gave me goosepimples. Vivienne is certainly a mother-in-law from hell, but a memorable character.
Sophie Hannah uses a clever style of writing, shifting perspectives between Hannah, Simon, the detective determined to believe her, and Charlie, his sergeant.
I confess to be slightly disappointed at the end, but in part this was due to the fact that I could not not have been more wrong!

"Her novels sparkle" Independent.

Thin- Grace Bowman

"Powerfully written, beautifully articulated, gripping" Independent on Sunday.

"If I share a secret with you, do you promise to tell everyone?"
Grace Bowman lived a perfectly ordinary life as a pretty, popular teenager until one day, aged eighteen, she went on a diet- and didn't stop. Then couldn't stop. Her weight plummeted to less than six stone. Starving herself had become an addiction.
A poignant account of surviving the urge to self-destruct, and growing into a shape of her own, Thin exposes the secrets and dispels the myths that surround anorexia nervosa. An extraordinary account of one young woman's courage to face up to her illness, it is also an inspirational story that reaches out to others lost in the wilderness- those still suffering and those who just want to understand.
I loved this book. I have read many memoirs of those, suffering and recovering from eating disorders and this is the most honest and insightful that I have come across. It seems that as well as trying to explain to others, Bowman herself is trying to make some sense of her journey to hell and back again. It is a rare and brave account of the workings of the eating disordered mind, one which sufferers and carers alike will identify with. Especially effective is Bowman's use of the inner voice, the anorexic voice that drives her. She deviates from a straightforwrd narrative with play extracts, and medical fact which I found very innovative. Her work shows huge amounts of self-awareness, but unlike other memoirs of this kind, never descends into self-pity.
Everyone should read this book.

"Bowman describes her descent into anorexia with clinical skill; if you heven't understood it before, you will now...brave, revealing and shocking." William Leith, Guardian.