http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/1213568460

Black Chalk

This Contemporary thriller fiction centres around a school shooting and its enduring impact on the life of its sole survivor, Nate Dillingham, as he embarks on adulthood, trying but ultimately failing to avoid the aftermath. In the Oxfordshire countryside, a student walks into a classroom and starts shooting. Nate Dillingham, friends with shooter and victims alike, is the sole survivor and only witness. Easily led and eager to please, his recollections weave around others' hopes, until he loses track of what really happened that day. The realism of the story draws the reader in, as we follow events through Nate's eyes and experience his thoughts, feelings and recollections in the aftermath of what happened: Each memory came innocent and left tainted. And once tainted, memories grew persistent. Their stench remained and coloured other thoughts, so that, like an infection, I was soon left with nothing but tainted memories. Even fields of heather and gorse hugging the Cornish coastline took an ominous turn. I started thinking of the shadows in the recesses between cliff faces, of the waves crashing into rocks at the bottom of the drop, of the birds plunging down to the dark sea for their prey. With memories came dread, spreading and thickening but never rising to the surface. It skirted the politician's cufflinks, bounced off the police's tape recorder, and amassed at the inspector's eyebrows. I even grew afraid of the old black man who brought me my dinner on weekdays. Unable to resume his normal life after he leaves hospital, Nate decides to travel instead of going to university, hoping to escape, to avoid the memories. After eight evasive years on the road, he returns to Oxford, meets Leona and plunges into a world of candour and desire. But his defences are deteriorating, and Leona shares too much of his past, and leads him ultimately to a point where he can no longer evade it. This chilling contemporary thriller is an unsettling tale of passion and guilt, which takes the reader on an edgy journey into twenty-first century morality.

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