‘Exquisite…to be marvelled at.’
Reasons She Goes to the Woods
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2014
Deborah Kay Davies
‘Exquisite… To be marvelled at.’ Guardian
Shortlisted for the Encore Award
Longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction
Pearl can be very, very good. More often she is very, very bad. But she’s just a child, a mystery to all who know her. A little girl who has her own secret reasons for escaping to the nearby woods. What might those reasons be? And how can she feel so at home in the dark, sinister, sensual woods, a wonder of secrets and mystery?
Told in vignettes across Pearl’s childhood years, Reasons She Goes to the Woods is a nervy but lyrical novel about a normal girl growing up, doing the normal things little girls do.
Reviews
Guardian
‘Outstanding… Davies is a poet, and this is a poet’s novel in the very best sense – every word is pin-sharp and perfectly in its place.’
The Times
‘Pearl is a marvellously contradictory creation, showing the cruelty in children as well as their neediness, their capacity for love and friendship... Davies’ novel reads almost like a prose poem.’
Independent on Sunday
‘A sexy, contrary book…also a story concerned with morality. The most sustained and challenging aspect of the narrative is its insistence about what a little girl is like.’
Times Literary Supplement
‘Brutal, funny... One of those rare novels that is genuinely about sex, in all its irrationality and potential for self-destruction.’
Lionel Shriver, author of We Need to Talk About Kevin
‘Raw, lyrical, sad, this haunting story packs a deceivingly strong punch.’
Publishers Weekly
‘Best for highbrow sun lounging…told with a gothic, sensual style that Angela Carter would be proud of.’
Grazia
‘Dark, beautifully descriptive and rather haunting.’
Grazia Daily
‘A spiky echo of Angela Carter, with whom Ms Davies at her best stands fair comparison… The language is fresh, the imagery striking…and Pearl herself is a rampant, compelling, fully-realised, wild-eyed, teary creation.’
The Scotsman
‘A poetic and strange novel, full of flair.’
Emerald Street
‘A rounded, complex portrait of growing-up that has an atmosphere all of its own.’
We Love This Book
Praise for True Things About Me
‘In this wallop of a little novel... Ms. Davies writes with such spunk that you stay with her for much of the ride’ New York Times
Deborah Kay Davies
Deborah Kay Davies won the Wales Book of the Year 2009 award with her first work of fiction, the short story collection Grace, Tamar and Laszlo the Beautiful. When her debut novel, True Things About Me, came out in 2010, she was selected by BBC TV as one of the 12 best new British novelists. And when the novel was published in New York in 2011, Lionel Shriver chose it as her personal book of the year. She lives in Cardiff.
Author page
