The Water's Edge

A story of a place where two worlds meet.

After her mother's death, Rice, thirteen years old, wide-eyed and watchful, is packed off to live at the Water's Edge, a gloriously ramshackle Bournemouth hotel. Here she encounters the motherly Beatrice, whose response to any crisis is to put the kettle on; her witchily beautiful daughter, Esther; and the incessantly muttering, oddly comforting figure of Grandma Maggie, the 'chocolate monster'.

At first as ill at ease in her new surroundings as she is under her own skin, Rice gradually falls under the spell of the hotel - the rhythms of breakfasts and bathroom cleaning, the guests checking in and checking out, and the history she begins to piece together, which touches upon her own past.

And though Esther's frostiness - and refusal to let her touch any of her Adam Ant records - stings initially, in time the two girls begin to weave a story of their own.

Watching over Rice like a guardian angel is the figure of Persephone, who each spring is washed up on the shore from Hades. Long ago seduced by the hotel, she returns to witness its final chapter.

Louise Tondeur's debut is an utterly beguiling tale of the secrets that lurk behind wallpaper, in dusty cupboards and in curling family photographs, and a touching account of coming of age in the nineteen eighties. 'The Water's Edge' is a love story for anyone who has ever felt the romance of the English seaside.