The Chalk Cliffs

A family lost in a sea of lies, desperation, and love

De: Lauren White

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

My mother’s face was oval, like a pink sugared almond, but the moment she opened her eyes, these were all I noticed about her. They were blue pools to drown in, her eyes; enchanted places filled with mystery until I blundered in out of my depth. She was the reason I could never make sense of the fairy story, Snow White. To me, the wicked Queen was always the most beautiful in the land and not her insipid stepdaughter. How could the mirror get it so wrong? The beginning and end of everything happened a few months before I was five years old and it is as vivid to me, today, as the children’s picture books I now write and illustrate. The vibrant colours, the whiteness of the pages against the bold black shiny ink, the smell of the paper and print; all these startle and excite me, but the story, the story....that weighs so heavily upon me, filling me with dread. I have spent twenty six years trying to exorcise it, hunting down the words that might make the child I once was understand the facts and fiction of it. Yet if I ever succeeded, I know I would lose everyone whom I believed loved me back then. The insane thing is, they died anyway - died of that trauma, I think; died far too young. I lost my sister, suddenly, only this year, but it is my mother, her high heels click-clacking across the floor, her perfume drifting towards me, on every breeze, who haunts me still. To quote from one of the reviews: "There are no easy outs and there is nothing predictable about this book. Don't miss it." And another (Canada): "Deeply moving and mesmerising. I was captivated....the story inexorably moves ahead catching the reader in its suspenseful wake ." And a third: "It is probably one of the most powerfully emotional books I've read recently."