Killing the Dead, by Marcus Sedgwick, is one of this year’s World Book Day £1 books for young adults. Having read and enjoyed The Ghosts of Heaven I noted the spiral on the cover and was eager to get hold of a copy before bookshops sold out. These specially produced offerings are only available for a short time.
Set in an exclusive girls’ boarding school in the nineteen-sixties the story explores the aftermath of a pupil’s apparent suicide. Like the four stories in The Ghosts of Heaven it contains references to spirals and suggestions of superstition. The writing is taut with undercurrents of mystery and unanswered questions. The atmosphere evoked is spooky in places but always believable.
At just over 100 pages this book can be quickly read but is a complete and thought provoking tale. Within the confines of dormitory life what impact does one girl’s actions have on others? What secrets do they keep? While teachers continue to believe that the beautiful and clever are good how can those who go unnoticed survive the casual cruelty inflicted by the entitled? The denouement brings home how lonely and difficult life can be for those who do not fit within society’s view of that which one should admire and to which one should aspire.
This is the third book that I have read by the author and cements my admiration for his style of writing. He spins a compelling tale that is hard to put down.
“The most important person in this story is the one you will never meet. She is gone and yet she lingers, in the memories of those who knew her and lived with her. This is how the dead survive; they live in our memories, and some of the times that is a good thing and beautiful, and other times it is not good, and then the dead are like a virus in the blood, an infection of the mind. Then, although we might wish to get rid of them forever, we cannot. We might even wish to kill them, but that is a mighty and nigh impossible thing, for killing the dead is very hard to do.”
neverimitate 