Marlena

‘Exhilarating and terrifying . . . Buntin excels at capturing the sensations of girlhood‘ Huffington Post Tell me what you can‘t forget, and I‘ll tell you who you are . . . Cat is fifteen and the lonely new girl in town. Until she meets her neighbour, the manic, beautiful, pill-popping Marlena. Cat is quickly lured into Marlena‘s roller-coaster orbit by little more than an arched eyebrow and a shake of white-blonde hair. Within one intense, obsessive year of friendship, Marlena is dead, drowned in six inches of icy water in the woods nearby. Decades later, when a ghost from that pivotal year surfaces unexpectedly, Cat must try again to move on, even as the memory of Marlena calls her back. ‘A novel of deep and exquisite intelligence, humour and riveting sensitivity. A terrific debut‘ Lorrie Moore ‘Buntin‘s prose is luminous, brilliantly describing the fever dream of intense teenage friendship‘ Sunday Express