THE POOLS

Roberts, Bethan

Set in an Oxfordshire village, THE POOLS tells the story of the events leading up to the murder of a teenage boy. The novel is told through two voices; that of the boy's father, the unfailingly sensible but sensitive Howard Hall and that of the boy's friend, the deceptively confident but confused young girl Joanna Denton. The story is broad in scope - covering twenty years of family history, but extremely intimate in its focus. Bethan displays remarkable maturity in her presentation of these lives brimming with domestic and sexual anguish.