cover image Cold Light

Cold Light

Jenn Ashworth. Morrow, $14.99 trade paper (352p) ISBN 978-0-06-207603-8

Set in a small English town, Ashworth%E2%80%99s second novel (after A Kind of Intimacy) offers an object lesson in the perils of concealing the past. For ten years, twenty-something Laura has kept mum about at least one dreadful secret: What really happened when her best friend Chloe drowned at age 14. The knowledge has crippled Laura%E2%80%99s hopes for a meaningful life. She holds a menial job as a shopping center cleaner and lives alone, fearful that mutual friend Emma might expose her. In her first-person recollections of the fateful months preceding Chloe%E2%80%99s death, Laura dwells%E2%80%94perhaps overmuch%E2%80%94on the minute details of her angst-ridden adolescence. Ashworth pulls no punches. Though some of the dark, British humor may be lost on an American audience, the author%E2%80%99s narrative is revealing, timely, and damning of tabloid-media sensationalism. Agent: Anthony Goff, David Highham Associates. (Oct.)