News From Nowhere Radical & Community Bookshop
not-for-profit - a workers'co-op - committed to social justice | 96 Bold Street, Liverpool L1 4HY - 0151 708 7270
The Gosling Girl
by Jacqueline Roy - £14.99 Simon & Schuster Ltd (2022)
hardback
ISBN 13: 9781398504219 | ISBN 10: 1398504211
"[The Gosling Girl] interrogates the context of a child's crime and simplistic notions of evil by society and the media. It fosters understanding & empathy and draws us deep inside the protagonist's psychology"Monster? Murderer?
(Bernardine Evaristo)
Child? Victim?
Michelle Cameron’s name is associated with the most abhorrent of crimes. A child who lured a younger child away from her parents and to her death, she is known as the black girl who murdered a little white girl; evil incarnate according to the media. As the book opens, she has done her time, and has been released as a young woman with a new identity to start her life again.
When another shocking death occurs, Michelle is the first in the frame. Brought into the police station to answer questions around a suspicious death, it is only a matter of time until the press find out who she is now and where she lives and set about destroying her all over again.
Natalie Tyler is the officer brought in to investigate the murder. A black detective constable, she has been ostracised from her family and often feels she is in the wrong job. But when she meets Michelle, she feels a complicated need to protect her, whatever she might have done.
The Gosling Girl is a moving, powerful account of systemic, institutional and internalised racism, and of how the marginalised fight back. It delves into the psychological after-effects of a crime committed in childhood, exploring intersections between race and class as Michelle's story is co-opted and controlled by those around her. Jacqueline writes with a cool restraint and The Gosling Girl is a raw and powerful novel that will stay with the reader long after they have turned the last page.
(Price & availability last checked: February 2022)
This website can't tell you if we have this book in the shop or not - to ask, phone us or use the enquiry link below.
(We can order most books within 7-10 days, subject to availability.)
In booklists: Fiction - Black British Writers, Writers by Surname - R,
In categories: Fiction, Black, Asian & Other Diasporas,
© News From Nowhere Co-operative Ltd IP24524R 2004-2024 | Privacy policy | Contact | return to top of page