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Published Jul 2018
336 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Emma Healey follows the success of her #1 internationally bestselling debut novel Elizabeth Is Missing, winner of the Costa First Novel Award, with this beautiful, thought-provoking, and psychologically complex tale that affirms her status as one of the most inventive and original literary novelists today.
Jen and Hugh Maddox have just survived every parent's worst nightmare.
Relieved, but still terrified, they sit by the hospital bedside of their fifteen-year-old daughter, Lana, who was found bloodied, bruised, and disoriented after going missing for four days during a mother-daughter vacation in the country. As Lana lies mute in the bed, unwilling or unable to articulate what happened to her during that period, the national media speculates wildly and Jen and Hugh try to answer many questions.
Where was Lana? How did she get hurt? Was the teenage boy who befriended her involved? How did she survive outside for all those days? Even when she returns to the family home and her school routine, Lana only provides the same frustrating answer over and over: "I can't remember."
For years, Jen had tried to soothe the depressive demons plaguing her younger child, and had always dreaded the worst. Now she has hope - the family has gone through hell and come out the other side. But Jen cannot let go of her need to find the truth. Without telling Hugh or their pregnant older daughter Meg, Jen sets off to retrace Lana's steps, a journey that will lead her to a deeper understanding of her youngest daughter, her family, and herself.
A wry, poignant, and masterfully drawn story that explores the bonds and duress of family life, the pain of mental illness, and the fraught yet enduring connection between mothers and daughters, Whistle in the Dark is a story of guilt, fear, hope, and love that explores what it means to lose and find ourselves and those we love.
"Starred Review. An absorbing view of a family, with the emphasis on the mother-daughter connection, in which - flaws aside - love shines through." - Booklist
"An exquisite portrait of a mother's healing love for her troubled daughter." - Kirkus
"The desperate love of a parent for a child they cannot know is wonderfully true to life, and despite the rather bleak set-up, there are a lot of very funny moments... both cathartic and satisfying." - The Guardian (UK)
"With masterful skill and mounting suspense, Healey reveals the complexities and ambiguities of family life. A brilliant and unsettling novel." - Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy and Mercury
"Emma Healey is a natural story-teller, and I knew from the opening page that I would be in safe hands. She expertly shows what it's like to have a depressed teenage daughter - all the love, the worries, and frustrations were perfectly observed, while still managing to bring out the comic side of modern family life, and wrap it in a story that urged me to keep reading to find out what happened." - Claire Fuller, author of Swimming Lessons
"I don't know anyone else who writes like this. Emma Healey's voice soars, sings, and startles as she takes you right under the skin of her characters. She 'magics' the ordinary into the extraordinary and, just as impressively, transposes the extraordinary to the ordinary. Unforgettable." - Jane Corry, author of My Husband's Wife and Blood Sisters
This information about Whistle in the Dark was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Emma Healey grew up in London where she studied for her first degree in bookbinding. She then worked for two libraries, two bookshops, two art galleries and two universities, before completing an MA in Creative Writing at the University East Anglia. Her first novel, Elizabeth is Missing, was published to critical acclaim in 2014, became a Sunday Times (London) bestseller and won the Costa First Novel Award. She lives in Norwich, England with her husband and daughter.
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