New Town Soul
New Town Soul
Publisher’s Synopsis
“Imagine what it must feel like to be a doll within a doll, to lose your own identity and spend your life in darkness.”
When Joey changes school Shane becomes his new best friend, with a personality for every occasion and a strange sense of recklessness. Joey longs to get close to Geraldine, but she is scared to get involved with him while Shane is around. Because the Shane whom Joey encounters has little in common with the Shane whom Geraldine once knew, back when they explored the streets of Blackrock together, and befriended an old man who had returned home to die, and to let a dark secret die with him.
Is Geraldine right to suspect that Shane is weaving a net of evil around them? Who is this old man and what secret awaits Joey in a derelict house in Blackrock?
Dermot Bolger’s first cross over novel for young adults, New Town Soul is a taut supernatural thriller set in a very real world – it is about the freedom of being young and the enslavement of being immortal. It has been used as a text for the Irish Leaving Certificate.
Publication details and Rights
For rights requests relating to his fiction please contact Edwin Higel, Publisher, New Island, edwin.higel@newisland.ie or Mariel Deegan, General Manager, mariel.deegan@newisland.ie
Teachers reading this novel in a classroom setting are welcome to contact the author for background information about the plot.
To purchase a copy click http://newisland.ie/product/new-town-soul/
Reviews
New Town Soul is taut, mysterious and gripping to the last word. Dermot Bolger gets under the skin of the teenage experience and explores the dark side of the teenage psyche. A beautifully crafted thriller
A terrific read, unsettling at times; filled with suspense, the intensity of teen relationships and soul music – at last teenagers can experience one of Ireland’s best writers
Dermot Bolger’s first book for young adults is many things. It’s a gripping thriller set in the south Dublin suburb of Blackrock. It’s an unsettling supernatural horror story. It’s a tenderly evocative look at teenage friendship and romance. It’s a reminder to be careful what you wish for. By turns chilling and tender, and always compulsively readable, New Town Soul is an excellent novel, and Bolger’s distinctive voice is a welcome addition to the world of Irish children’s fiction.
The novel moves confidently backwards and forwards in time — from the opening scene in 1932, where a young boy, Thomas, is told about changelings and the goings on at the Hell Fire Club… the shifting narration is deftly handled and … Bolger carefully and cleverly unravels the truth about Shane’s history, taking the reader on a compelling, moving and unsettling journey into the past and its ghosts. Soaked in atmosphere, it is a genuinely unnerving and spine-tingling read. New Town Soul is the best supernatural teen novel since Kate Thompson’s Creature of The Night and is recommended for both adult and older teen readers.
Bolger, a prolific and gifted writer, breaks new ground with this novel, marking as it does his first foray into young-adult fiction. However, it will have wide appeal and does not belong exclusively in the young-adult genre, such is the superb quality of its writing, insights and page-turner plot.
New Town Soul is a supernatural thriller for older readers situated in the real world of the contemporary teenage experience in Ireland. Friendship and love are central to this story. Shane is Joey’s new best friend. Joey pines for Geraldine, but his love is unrequited. Geraldine refuses to have anything to do with him while Shane is around. Shane and Geraldine have met before – an event neither of them will ever forget. The tale carefully and cleverly unravels the truth about Shane’s history, taking the reader on a compelling, moving and unsettling journey.