I am a huge fan of Rachel Ward and her books. After meeting her at an event back in February, I quickly read Numbers and loved it. I’m really excited to be kicking off The Drowning blog tour, because I loved it even more than Numbers, and that’s hard to beat.
I’m really hoping that you will all go away and buy this book after seeing this post, because I know I would want to if I were you!
What happens if you’ve done something terrible? But you can’t remember what. And you don’t know how to put it right …When Carl opens his eyes on the banks of a lake, his brother is being zipped into a body bag. What happened in the water? He can’t remember And when he glimpses a beautiful girl he thinks he recognizes, she runs away. Suddenly he knows he must find her – because together they must face the truth before it drowns them.
With ‘Numbers’ it was easy. ‘‘Numbers’ is about a girl who can see people’s death dates.’ See, all done in one sentence. But ‘The Drowning’ is more difficult to sum up. It’s a thriller about a boy who wakes up to see his older brother being zipped into a body bag. It’s a psychological drama. It’s a contemporary ghost story. It’s a twisted love story. It’s about families, and brothers. It’s about grief and regret. It’s about the power of water, something we all need, something that’s an essential element of our physical selves, but something that can frighten, harm, even kill.
There’s something else, too, a thread running through it that I didn’t even know was there until the second draft. And then it was staring me in the face. ‘The Drowning’ is about domestic violence – abuse between people in a relationship, which can often be repeated through the generations. Abuse can range from verbal intimidation right through to murder – in the UK two women are killed every week by a partner or ex-partner.
Traditionally the focus in the media and in professional support on domestic violence has focused on adults but in 2009, the NSPCC published a report which first identified the scale of abuse in intimate relationships of people aged 13-17. They found that nearly 75% of the girls that they interviewed had experienced some form of emotional abuse from a partner, and a third reported some form of sexual violence.
Often the abuser will try to isolate their victim, undermine their self-worth, blame them for the abuse. Increasingly, social media are used as tools to intimidate and bully. Facebook pages and other sites are mechanisms to extend exploitation, control and revenge.
‘The Drowning’ isn’t a book purely about domestic abuse, but it’s in there and it’s an important element. I write books which are grounded in reality, and sadly, part of our reality today is domestic violence.
No-one should suffer abuse within a relationship. It doesn’t matter if you’re 15 or 55. It’s wrong for another person to abuse, control, intimidate or hurt you. If it’s happening to you, tell someone. If you’re under 18, a friend is a good start but then tell an adult, someone you trust, or call Childline on 0800 1111. And get some help.