You
Joanna Briscoe
You
Cecilia is obsessively in love with her teacher, the older, married Mr. Dahl. She plots and speculates, yet she never guesses that what she dreams of could actually happen. Is it her imagination, or is the high-minded Mr. Dahl responding to her? Cecilia's mother Dora wants the good life. She and her husband moved to Dartmoor so their children could run wild, free to make their own choices and mistakes. But Dora discovers that there is more to the countryside idyll, and indeed to her own marriage, than she assumed, when she finds herself fascinated by the very last, the very worst person she could fall for: the elegant and dangerous Elisabeth Dahl. Now, after twenty years, Cecilia is coming home, to face Dora, and to face her past.
3.6 out of 5 based on 7 reviews
|
Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Fiction |
| Genre |
General Fiction |
| Format |
Hardcover |
| Pages |
368 |
| RRP |
£11.99 |
| Date of Publication |
July 2011 |
| ISBN |
978-0747598992 |
| Publisher |
Bloomsbury |
| |
Cecilia is obsessively in love with her teacher, the older, married Mr. Dahl. She plots and speculates, yet she never guesses that what she dreams of could actually happen. Is it her imagination, or is the high-minded Mr. Dahl responding to her? Cecilia's mother Dora wants the good life. She and her husband moved to Dartmoor so their children could run wild, free to make their own choices and mistakes. But Dora discovers that there is more to the countryside idyll, and indeed to her own marriage, than she assumed, when she finds herself fascinated by the very last, the very worst person she could fall for: the elegant and dangerous Elisabeth Dahl. Now, after twenty years, Cecilia is coming home, to face Dora, and to face her past.
Reviews
The Evening Standard
Liz Jones
"This novel has a fantastic plot, involving an adolescent crush the 17-year-old Cecilia has on her bookish, thirtysomething teacher, and a parallel lesbian affair, but it's the writing that's astounding. I've never come across teenage love, a wash of emotion and longing that can never be equalled in its intensity, written about so romantically but also so gynaecologically ... My only gripe was the ending. I'd have liked things sewn up a little more tightly. But I'm jealous of anyone who hasn't read this book. What a treat you have in store."
07/07/2011
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The Literary Review
Olivia Laing
"... a coolly managed, gripping melodrama of the kind Daphne Du Maurier might have admired ... a haunting, richly satisfying novel that plays with disturbing complexity on the question of how far it's possible, or even desirable, to escape from the past."
02/07/2011
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The Daily Telegraph
Jane Shilling
"As a storyteller, Briscoe excels. Her fluent prose leads the reader inexorably on. If one peered too beadily beyond the enticing surface, one might find the structure of her novel a little weak, the substance a trifle thin. But why anatomise what is essentially a lovely, and successful, entertainment."
20/07/2011
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The Guardian
Elizabeth Day
"Briscoe is brilliant at conveying the obsessiveness of teenage love, ratcheting up the tension until the reader is every bit as involved as the character, analysing each tiny gesture for any more profound meaning ... the book as a whole feels slightly overlong. But at its best, Briscoe's prose is beguilingly good and, I'm sure, capable of being appreciated by both male and female readers."
08/07/2011
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The Independent
Amanda Craig
"As a dramatisation of the wild idealism of late adolescence, You is vivid, if somewhat over-familiar; but as a portrait of counter-cultural rural life at its most damaged and damaging, it's hilarious, disturbing and more interesting than either its cover or its title might suggest."
08/08/2011
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The Guardian
Rachel Seiffert
"The dialogue doesn't always convince: almost everything is said out loud, and characters sometimes talk about one another rather baldly, as though discussing protagonists in a novel ... To be hooked by a book is a treat, and I certainly enjoyed my time in this one's tangles. So many intriguing strands: how can she – will she – tie them? What marks the novel out is its skilful juggling of conflicting perspectives; so finely balanced that each turn the characters take contains both great reward and terrible risk. "
19/08/2011
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The Sunday Times
Joan Smith
"Briscoe’s portrait of Dora and Patrick’s chaotic household, and the impact of their parenting style on their children, is vivid and acerbic. She has a singular prose style, moving from crisp observations to sentences that seem so gorged with words that they plunge into a lush romanticism. Most of the time it works, although the female characters dominate the narrative, the men appearing weaker and perhaps a little less interesting to their creator."
23/07/2011
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