 |
Publication date: 11th January 2018
I received an advance e-copy of this book via NetGalley from publisher Penguin UK (Michael Joseph)
in exchange for an honest review
|
In 1986, Eddie and his friends are just kids on the verge of adolescence. They spend their days biking around their sleepy English village and looking for any taste of excitement they can get. The chalk men are their secret code: little chalk stick figures they leave for one another as messages only they can understand. But then a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, and nothing is ever the same.
In 2016, Eddie is fully grown and thinks he's put his past behind him, but then he gets a letter in the mail containing a single chalk stick figure. When it turns out that his friends got the same message, they think it could be a prank--until one of them turns up dead. That's when Eddie realizes that saving himself means finally figuring out what really happened all those years ago.
My thoughts:
Another stunning cover design to grab readers' attention during the busy new year period. It is no accident that the story within the covers is as strong. The writing is brilliant with realistic characters throughout and a totally believable storyline.
Having been a teenager myself in the 1980s when this story begins, and having been the only girl in a friendship group of school children I could imagine being one of the characters in the story.
We have all done things in our childhood like drawing chalk man designs for passing on messages (there were no mobile phones in the mid eighties, remember!) and the summer holidays were often spent cycling around looking for where the rest of your mates were hanging out - usually signified by a pile of pushbikes outside someone's house. And of course a group of kids with active imaginations always come up with stories about anyone who looks even the slightest bit different to the norm such as Mr Halloran in the book.
The way the author has linked tragic events that happened in 1986 to people and happenings thirty years later is absolutely ingenious. The older version of every character was spot on, with health issues affecting some of the older generation being presented with compassion and understanding. The emotions felt by each of the youngsters and their understanding of certain situations is written in terms that a child of that age would use. I love the way that in the later years of the book the adult characters express feelings of insecurity that we all feel - that we aren't ever really "grown up" at all.
As with a lot of books in this genre, most of the characters have been harbouring secrets for many years and when some of the revelations are made it makes others in the friendship group completely reassess what they have always thought were the facts. New information gets exposed in jaw dropping fashion but some secrets are never told, not even to your best mate.
I found this book extremely readable, well paced and will definitely be recommending it strongly as a top read for January.
About the author:
C. J. Tudor was born in Salisbury and grew up in Nottingham, where she still lives with her partner and young daughter.
She left school at sixteen and has had a variety of jobs over the years, including trainee reporter, radio scriptwriter, shop assistant, ad agency copywriter and voiceover.
In the early nineties, she fell into a job as a television presenter for a show on Channel 4 called Moviewatch. Although a terrible presenter, she got to interview acting legends such as Sigourney Weaver, Michael Douglas, Emma Thompson and Robin Williams. She also annoyed Tim Robbins by asking a question about Susan Sarandon’s breasts and was extremely flattered when Robert Downey Junior showed her his chest.
While writing the Chalk Man she ran a dog-walking business, walking over twenty dogs a week as well as looking after her little girl.
She’s been writing since she was a child but only knuckled down to it properly in her thirties. Her English teacher once told her that if she ‘did not become Prime Minister or a best-selling author’ he would be ‘very disappointed.’
The Chalk Man was inspired by a tub of chalks a friend bought for her daughter’s second birthday. One afternoon they drew chalk figures all over the driveway. Later that night she opened the back door to be confronted by weird stick men everywhere. In the dark, they looked incredibly sinister. She called to her partner: ‘These chalk men look really creepy in the dark . . .’
She left school at sixteen and has had a variety of jobs over the years, including trainee reporter, radio scriptwriter, shop assistant, ad agency copywriter and voiceover.
In the early nineties, she fell into a job as a television presenter for a show on Channel 4 called Moviewatch. Although a terrible presenter, she got to interview acting legends such as Sigourney Weaver, Michael Douglas, Emma Thompson and Robin Williams. She also annoyed Tim Robbins by asking a question about Susan Sarandon’s breasts and was extremely flattered when Robert Downey Junior showed her his chest.
While writing the Chalk Man she ran a dog-walking business, walking over twenty dogs a week as well as looking after her little girl.
She’s been writing since she was a child but only knuckled down to it properly in her thirties. Her English teacher once told her that if she ‘did not become Prime Minister or a best-selling author’ he would be ‘very disappointed.’
The Chalk Man was inspired by a tub of chalks a friend bought for her daughter’s second birthday. One afternoon they drew chalk figures all over the driveway. Later that night she opened the back door to be confronted by weird stick men everywhere. In the dark, they looked incredibly sinister. She called to her partner: ‘These chalk men look really creepy in the dark . . .’
No comments:
Post a Comment