Desire Line

Description

A freak tidal surge hitting a Welsh seaside town leaves devastation and three locals drowned. Yet when a fourth body is found in the debris it takes time for it to be identified as the respected Oxford writer Sara Meredith. A celebrity, an icon to an entire generation – what was she doing in such an unlikely place? And how had it ended in her death?

These mysteries overwhelm the lives of people Sara has left behind: estranged husband Josh, their volatile teenage daughter Eurwen and someone else – a stranger. Is this stranger now the only person who can reconstruct Sara’s last few weeks, frame-by-frame?

‘Gee Williams’ prose style calls to mind a somewhat unlikely hybrid between James Joyce and Martin Amis. First person, unreliable, not-quite-murder-mystery […] And in Williams’ hands, Rhyl, the book’s setting becomes a noir-ish, too-bright-early-technicolour otherworld […] much like fellow Welsh author Jo Mazelis’ recent workSignificance,Desire Lineis a work of great philosophical depth and profundity masquerading as a murder mystery. And like that book it leaves you both disorientated and yet somehow awoken. A must read.’ – John Lavin, The Welsh Agenda

‘Mapping a complex sequence of events, alongside an exploration of the effects of trauma and loss, embodied by the tidal surge which strikes the North Wales’ coastal town, Desire Line is a thought-provoking observation of human behaviour that will draw readers in to its mysterious, and often dark, world.’ – Emma Schofield, Wales Arts Review

‘Williams writing is stylish, her s mesmeric.’ – Rachel Trezise

‘It is a work that understands ourselves and is so eloquently written it would be a wave of disappointment should you forego the wonderful experience it brings.’

-Maddy McGlynn,New Welsh Review

About Gee:

Gee Williams was born and brought up in North Wales and now lives in Cheshire with her husband. A widely-published poet and a dramatist as well as writer of fiction, her work has appeared in disparate places: fromThe Sunday TimestoThe Pan Book of Horror. Many of herscripts have been broadcast by BBC Radio 4. She has won both The Rhys Davies and The Book Pl@ce Contemporary Short Story Awards, wasPoetry Review’s New Poet, Summer ‘97, short-listed for The Geoffrey Dearmer Award and (with Sol B. River) short-listed for the Race in the Media Radio Drama Award 2001. Pure Gold Fiction Award 2008. Short-listed for the James Tait Black Memorial Fiction Prize 2008. Short-listed for Wales Book of the Year 2009 and 2013.