Sophie
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
Matthew and Sophie enjoyed what seemed to be an idyllic childhood existence.Free from parental restrictions, they played together in the old barn and in the woods and fields around, as well as in the disused quarry where they hunted for fossils and where Sophie kept all her secrets.There were just the two of them, for their mother carried on her own, mysterious, life and their baby brother did not live long enough to intrude.
Mattie hero-worshipped his all-knowing elder sister, and believed that their childhood would go on for ever.But Sophie was growing up, and the secret elements in her life would affect Mattie in shocking and unforeseen ways as his childish terrors became an all-too dreadful reality.For Mattie, too, had his secrets...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Haunting, enigmatic and suspenseful, Burt's second novel (after The Hole) is a tightly woven tale of psychological horror, in which two children shape and destroy their small world. Sophie and Matthew live in a large house in rural England with a distant, mentally ill mother and a father who comes and goes. The remoteness of both of their caretakers allows the children complete freedom to fill their days as they wish, usually with long rambling walks in the woods, digging in the nearby abandoned quarry and exploring abandoned farms. Sophie's extraordinary brilliance means she can easily manipulate the adults in her life at school, on tests and at home. Over the course of six years from the time Sophie is seven and Mattie five Burt tantalizes the reader with unsettling glimpses of Sophie's cunning, disturbing plans and shows how Mattie follows Sophie's lead with the love and admiration of a younger sibling. Narrated in part by an adult Sophie and Mattie 20 years later, the novel cleverly shifts perspective more than once, leading up to an explosive series of final twists. Mattie is forced to see Sophie for who she was as a child and himself for the adult he has become. At the dark denouement, the reader will be tempted to start the book over again to see just how Burt wrought this ingenious tale.
