The Schoolhouse - Softcover

Ward, Sophie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593469267 ISBN 13: 9780593469262

Verlag: Vintage, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

From the Booker Prize-longlisted author of Love and Other Thought Experiments comes a masterful and gripping thriller about truth, silence, and the weight of the past.

Isobel lives an isolated life in North London, where she works at a nearby library. She feels safe, so long as she keeps to her routines and doesn’t let her thoughts stray too far into the past. But a newspaper photograph of a missing local schoolgirl and a letter from her old teacher send her spiraling and bring back the trauma of what happened years ago, when she was a pupil at The Schoolhouse.

The Schoolhouse was a 1970s experimental school where the usual rules did not apply. Life there was a dark interplay of freedom and adventure, violence and fear. It was here that Isobel learned that some truths should never be revealed. But try as she might, the truth is coming for Isobel, and everything and everyone she has tried to protect are now at risk.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Sophie Ward is an actor and writer who has worked in film and television since her feature film debut in Steven Spielberg’s Young Sherlock Holmes, and in theatre, most notably with the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow. Sophie has been an active campaigner for LGBTQ rights and her non-fiction book, A Marriage Proposal, was published by the Guardian in 2014. Her first novel, Love and Other Thought Experiments, was longlisted for the Booker prize in 2020.

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The university library was housed in an unimposing corner of North London, halfway up the Holloway Road. A small campus occupied the grounds of a former landfill site and seagulls still circled overhead, drawn by the scent of waste. When Isobel walked back from lunch the shadows of the birds followed her in the winter sunlight.

From the safety of her desk, she flinched at the thoughtof the gulls’ swollen bodies. Across the room in the study area, two children sat in modular chairs and read books they had brought with them. The children distracted her. She was used to the research students and teaching staff using the library but visitors had to be registered with the university. The children must belong to one of the faculty. Isobel watched them from her workstation.

The library stood at the back of the campus, a liver-bricked cube with a wide staircase leading from the entrance to the road below. Inside, the books were arranged over two levels. Isobel’s station was placed in the middle of the ground floor. From there, she could see everyone who entered. If she turned, she had a clear view between the rows of shelving behind her and Periodicals on her left. It was among the newspapers and magazines that the children sat. They didn’t speak to each other. The only activity came from Melanie Harris at the front desk, stamping books and stacking them onto the metal trolleys. Isobel imagined that Melanie must stamp books in her sleep.

She shared her desk with Jenny. Since Isobel was not a qualified librarian, she was responsible for the maintenance of the books and some of the filing while Jenny took care of all research enquiries. The senior librarians worked in their offices upstairs, visiting the ground floor when they had specific requests. They were always smartly dressed, the two male librarians in suits, while the women wore silky blouses and woollen skirts. Isobel enjoyed the busy periods at the end of term, when everyone worked on the shelves. The jewel colours of the women’s clothes shone out against the sea of student denim. Isobel did not care to shine, but she admired
the confidence of those who did.

She took a sip of coffee from the Thermos she kept on the shelf under the countertop. Jenny was making a fresh pot in the staffroom but Isobel preferred the way they made it in the university canteen. The liquid was cold now, but she drank it while she watched the children.

The two girls sat with their hair hanging loose, shoulders rounded as they bent over their books. They looked alike, thin bodies in flared jeans and polo neck jumpers, with the floury faces and shadowed eyes of city children in winter. It had been so long since Isobel had spent any time with children. They were young to be on their own in the library, but they knew how to behave. Nine, maybe? Ten? They each turned the page they were reading and glanced up at each other. She could almost read their lips from where she stood.

‘No,’ one of the girls seemed to say, ‘family.’

Isobel looked away.

When Jenny returned from her break, Isobel got her coat and scarf and went outside. Clouds drooped over the campus square. A few students leaned against benches, eating chips and smoking. A solitary Christmas star in gold tinsel shimmered from a lamp post. Isobel walked across the icy concrete, feeling the cold spread through the soles of her shoes up into her toes, and letting her breath condense in the wool under her chin. She went back to the library as the last streetlight flickered on. The children were gone.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Vintage
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593469267
• ISBN 13: 9780593469262
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 289
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar