Blink

by Andrea Badenoch

It is 1962 and in a pit village of County Durham, Gloria, the local hair stylist, is found dead. Refusing to accept the suicide explanation embraced by the village, Gloria`s young niece keeps her eyes open and tries to work out what has happened.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Died of breast cancer aged 52, Andrea Badenoch had studied and taught literature for much of her life, but came late to writing. Once embarked on her new career, she wrote a book a year until 2002.
She was born on Tyneside, then moved to Leeds. She was educated at Leeds Girls' High School and read literature at Manchester University, taking an MA in American literature from London University. Literature and feminism were central to her life: from her work with a south London women's writing project in the late 1970s to her more recent role at the centre of a group of women writers in Newcastle. She co-edited the journal Writing Women for six years, helping to oversee its two anthologies, The Virago Book of Writing Women (1998 and 1999).

Reviews

[Hazel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really atmospheric crime novel that evocatively captures the landscape of the Durham minefields and the general bleakness of the 1960s in the north of England. Deserves to be far better known and more widely read than it is.