The Pools - Tapa blanda

A tense thriller that reminded me of Julie Myerson's Something Might Happen (Viv Groskop Eve)

Brilliantly illuminating... A beautifully understated debut (Easy Living)

A complex anatomy of a murder, The Pools brilliantly evokes the sickening recognition of a wasteful death. Bethan Roberts is a fearless writer whose first novel raises questions about fate and responsibility that remain with the reader long after the last page has been turned. A compelling debut (Louise Welsh)

An unsettling and disturbing tale of awakening sexuality and predatory parents (Patricia Duncker)

A wonderfully self-assured debut... There is a forbidding feeling throughout the novel - an almost audible hum of misgiving coming off the pages. Superb (Ruth Atkins The Bookseller)

A cool and relevant novel... an urban Cold Comfort Farm... expertly crafted (Sunday Express)

A sense of controlled menace broods over every scene, as if the book's tragic outcome were inevitableA sense of controlled menace broods over every scene, as if the book's tragic outcome were inevitable (Guardian)

A haunting glimpse of emerging adolescent sexuality and of adult lives wasted by grief... a convincing, haunting debut that evokes an uneasy and menacing Middle England (Time Out)

Middle England, mid-1980s. The kind of place where nothing ever happens. Except something has happened. A fifteen year old boy called Robert has been killed, down by the pools. And half a dozen lives will come unravelled. There?s Kathryn and Howard, Rob?s parents. Kath has been making the best of her second marriage after the love of her life died young. Howard has been clinging onto a family life he hardly expected to have. There?s Joanna, the teen queen of nowheresville. She?s been looking for a way out, escape from her parents? broken marriage. She thought Rob might take her away from all this, but lately she?s started to think Rob might have other plans. And then there?s Shane, with the big hands and the backward brain and the fixation on Joanna. Bethan Roberts? strikingly assured debut novel expertly reveals the tensions and terrors that underpin apparently ordinary lives, and can lead them to spiral suddenly out of control.