Special

Is it true that girls behave better than boys? Or are their methods of destruction merely more subtle?

A group of teenaged schoolgirls and their teachers are in the Forest of Dean for a post-exam activity break. Between the compulsory bouts of walks, gym, swimming and cycling, the girls discover that the nearby town offers all the illicit thrills of drink and drugs and sex they could possibly want. But although they have been classmates for years, they have never before been quite so dangerously close. Three of them - Jules, headstrong, short-tempered, bitchy; Hen, secretive and dangerously thin; and Ali, the solitary tree-climbing outsider - react very differently to this raw new world of temptation and intimacy. As the days unfold, it becomes evident that their worst enemies lie not beyond the hostel gates, but altogether closer to home.

Written with merciless clarity and startling insight, "Special" is a chilling and revealing novel about the world of adolescent girls, a hall of mirrors where the shape of the everyday can, without warning, become suddenly monstrous.

"Sinister and menacing" - Patricia Duncker, Books of 2002, New Statesman

"A brilliant and disturbing take on underoccupied teenage girls" - Maggie O'Farrell, Books of 2002, Observer