Home
  • Home
  • Latest Issue
  • Past Issues
  • Authors & Artists
  • Articles
  • Reviews
  • News
  • Forums
  • Search

Deep Secret

  • View
  • Rearrange

Digital version – browse, print or download

Can't see the preview?
Click here!

How to print the digital edition of Books for Keeps: click on this PDF file link - click on the printer icon in the top right of the screen to print.

BfK Newsletter

Receive the latest news & reviews direct to your inbox!

BfK No. 145 - March 2004

Cover Story
This issue's cover illustration is from Satoshi Kitamura's Once Upon an Ordinary School Day. Satoshi Kitamura is interviewed by Martin Salisbury. Thanks to Andersen Press for their help with this March cover.

  • PDFPDF
  • Printer-friendly versionPrinter-friendly version
  • Send to friendSend to friend

Deep Secret

Berlie Doherty
(Puffin Books)
272pp, 978-0141380391, RRP £12.99, Hardcover
10-14 Middle/Secondary
Buy "Deep Secret" on Amazon

There are some outstanding passages in this novel recalling a rural way of life now long gone, even though the events described - the flooding of a farming valley in order to make a reservoir - took place from 1935-45. The author knows this part of the countryside intimately, but there is almost too much feeling in this book, both for the past itself and for the lives of the various characters faced by the destruction of their community. Add to this strong sense of loss, a plot involving an untimely death, a near murder, a buried baby and a long-held individual grief, and the general over-arching sense of melancholy at times threatens to obliterate the more positive things in this novel. But Berlie Doherty is such a skilled writer that her story always survives, although at times it is a close run thing as one tragedy follows another with barely a chance to catch breath.

Reviewer: 
Nicholas Tucker
3
  • About us
  • Contact us
  • Help/FAQ
  • My Account