𝑺𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒓𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕, 𝑰 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒉𝒐𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒃𝒍𝒆, 𝒏𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒚, 𝒎𝒆𝒂𝒏, 𝒂 𝒃𝒖𝒍𝒍𝒚. 𝑶𝒉, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒓𝒖𝒆𝒍 𝒄𝒐𝒍𝒅 𝒅𝒆𝒑𝒕𝒉𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒎𝒆.

One thing never seems to change in most teenage girls, whether it’s the 1960’s or current day, one girl is always the focus for intense dislike, which leads to mean, nasty, cruel bullying. Sally and Pamela are friends, but annoyed by the more posh, proper little miss Sylvia. With her beautiful singing voice, so full of promise, and her weird way of interacting, naturally they can’t stand the smug girl. Always looking down her nose at others. Pamela is the type to blow off school, confrontational, unapologetically bold. The sort of girl who is considered to be a poor influence, and most people do not like her one bit. A big, coarse girl who curses like it’s nothing but makes life so much more fun and interesting to Sally. People fear her and her ‘nasty streak’, of course she encourages Sally’s contempt for Sylvia. They have a ‘silly séance’ in the biology room with other girls, it gets interrupted by Mrs. Kitney who chews them out and scolds them over messing about with such things, game or not! Later, Sally wonders if it was the cause of troubles that followed.

After an incident, Sylvia is on the mend and attends, much to Sally’s dismay, a party and her boyfriend Robin pays the insufferable prig too much mind. Soon Sylvia is swooning in attention from her beautiful singing. Robin is just being nice to Sylvia, Sally has nothing to worry about. Back at school, something odd happens, something frightful. Things get really weird, when she goes into the forbidden greenhouse on the roof, she sees Sylvia, but how could she be downstairs and on the roof at the same time? She knows that she is a rat, the one who gets her and Pamela in trouble even if nothing is adding up. Sylvia, causing trouble for them, and their friendship. They get revenge in their own calculated ways, as girls are wont to do. It just makes them look bad. Sylvia always seems to be the ‘good one’. Her boyfriend doesn’t take her fears seriously, how can she stay with him feeling like this? Things escalate, girls on the roof are a dangerous thing. When someone is hurt, assumptions are made, but Sally knows deep down the tragedy isn’t so simple. She suffers a shocking loss. It stays with her, whatever happened on the roof, everything she saw, the thing that wasn’t Slyvia but looked like her, how could telling the truth cause another person to breakdown? After a crushing time, she and Rob lose touch and life goes on, mysteries are never solved.

Sally decides on anthropology at Kent in Canterbury, Rob goes to Liverpool to study architecture and they drift apart. Years later, they reunite and she discovers he is living in her old school, turned into flats. It’s a ghost of a place, living inside of her too, even seven years after the tragic events. It begins ‘eating her’ again, or is it the past and all her shame and regrets. She sounds mad, and Rob doesn’t know how to comfort her or make sense of what seems to be only happening in her mind. We follow her downward spiral.

It’s an interesting novel because it begins with those difficult adolescent years, when we’re at our worst and often transfer our own securities unto other people. We let so much get under our skin and take things far more seriously than those with the wisdom of years would, and yet during this time for Sally her mind is either tricking her or something unexplained, almost supernatural is happening. It never gets dealt with and rises again to confront her. But is it something happening within or is it external? A peculiar, interesting, creepy novel. Is it mental illness or is she truly haunted? It is a slow but well written fiction.

Publication Date: April 14, 2022

Head of Zeus

Apollo

An excellent, eerie drama set mostly in a school for girls in 1960s Manchester. Beautifully written and engrossing throughout, this story brought back lots of memories for me personally. The descriptions of life in the 1960s and 70s are so realistic and detailed, right down to the smell of Coty perfume and the less pleasant lingering odour of school dinners. A truly wonderful, poignant and thought provoking read.

I really enjoyed this book it was well written with a gripping storyline and well developed and dynamic characters. I didn't this book to be eerie and dark but it was and I loved it. Unpredictable and emotive, a really good read.

I really tried with this book. I just could not get onto the story. The slow burn effect and frankly the writing was a turn off for me. I really wanted to love this book.

A very unusual story about the pains of growing up and the pain of never quite being satisfied. Carol Birch has written a story that could be considered contemporary fiction about female friendship OR it could be considered a story about mental health OR it could be considered a story about being haunted about guilt. But it's all of these.

Sally is 15 and and attending an all girls school in the mid 1960s. She is friends with Pamela, a rough girl who no one else likes, and they both spend large parts of the day in the greenhouse on the roof. Their classmate, Sylvia, a prim and proper girl, is their enemy and constant source of their bullying. Many nights, Sally ends by staring out her window, looking at the train passing by.

Tragedy happens at school, followed by another incident that causes some sort of incident at the school. Sally breaks up with her long term boyfriend Robin and then....and then the book takes off into an amazing, beautiful turn..several years into the future. Sally and her friends have finished college and are young adults. Sally and Robin run into each other in the street and reconnect. He's living in her old school, which has recently become an apartment building. And this is where the most interesting part of the book begins.

Carol Birch has written this haunting story that almost...melts your brain. Timelines weave in and out as Sally falls deeper and deeper into her mania and confusion. Visions and voices appear and you wonder if Sally is the only one who is experiencing it or if everyone is.

I found the "aftermath" the cherry on top of this story. It's added the extra something that I didn't realize that this story needed. It was already excellent but this just made it....near perfect.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This novel, set in 1960s and 70s Manchester, largely takes place in a girls’ boarding school and later, in the same building that, perhaps anomalously for the era, has been converted into residential flats. The book’s earlier sections deal with the collective psyche of adolescent girls in close quarters – think Picnic at Hanging Rock, or Carol Morley’s film The Falling – complete with ambivalent, burgeoning sexuality and spooky goings-on. One girl dies in mysterious circumstances, another appears to go mad. In its latter sections, the book morphs into a more conventional ghost story. I was left wanting more of the girls’ school sections, which dealt with the themes of adolescent psychological development in a really interesting way.
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

This is a slow burn of a read. There's an overall feeling of dread looming over the narrative. I kept waiting for the inevitable, unable to predict where the tale was heading. 

Teenage girls in mid-sixties Manchester, at a creepy old school, near a park called Piccadilly where a statue of Queen Victoria looms large. These girls have pictures of the Beatles and the Stones taped to their desks, wondering which ones they're going to marry. Birch absolutely nails the teenage girl banter, mannerisms, pranks, bullying, eye-rolling contempt for anything their parents, teachers, other adults might have to say. Eerie things happen. One of these teenagers, Sally, is our narrator. 

Time jumps, abruptly, and we catch up with Sally in her twenties. She hasn't thought much about those haunting days at school, until a chance meeting pulls her right back into her buried memories. We spend the rest of our time with Sally as she wrestles with those memories, her history with the school. 

I don't want to say much more and get into spoiler territory. I think this creepy story with its weird creepy girls in their old creepy school will stay with me for a while. I'll be seeking out more titles by Carol Birch.

My thanks to NetGalley and Head of Zeus for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

An unsettling and compelling ghost story, 'Shadow Girls' starts in the 1960s, where the narrator, Sally, is an ordinary teenager. She attends an unremarkable girls' school in Manchester, has a nice boyfriend whom she suspects she does not appreciate enough, and enjoys a little light rule-breaking with her loud mouthed friend Pamela. But then Pamela's feud with snooty classmate Sylvia begins to get out of hand, and rumours of strange phenomena start spreading amongst the girls. The events that follow will continue to haunt Sally well into her adulthood.

The novel is one of those supernatural tales which never tries to explain itself or offer explanations, which can be frustrating, but is often better than the alternative. Sally is a likeable and believable narrator, and the writing flows well. The environment of the school is conjured up very vividly, as is the 1960s setting. Although I went to school several decades later, Birch captures the interactions and preoccupations of teenage girls very well and I could recognise them from my own experiences. She somehow can capture the underlying essence of a place and time in a way that goes beyond words.

I found it an intriguing story because I wasn't really sure where it was going to go, which made it compelling. It's not very often that an avid reader gets a storyline that they can't see the likely outcome of. Birch writes the supernatural happenings in a way that is very believable - the way people react and behave felt like the way I might myself, if caught in a ghostly situation.

The ambiguity about what was happening and why will keep me thinking about the story - I know I'm going to be lying in bed tonight trying out different theories. All of Birch's books have stayed with me well - even several years after reading 'Jamrach's Menagerie' for example I can remember far more about it than probably any other book I read that year. I think this one is going to be similar, even though it is a very different story from that one. Birch is a versatile author who doesn't stick to a formula and her novels are always worth reading. I would recommend this to anyone who likes literary fiction and slow paced psychological thrillers. And be warned - it's a book that gets under your skin. You don't realise the effect it has whilst you're reading but it had me jumping at shadows all evening!

This is an interesting, if slightly disjointed book. It focuses on a young girl, Sally, and her friendship with Pamela and antagonisms against another schoolmate, Sylvia Rose. This is a psychosexual drama about the cruelty and mysticism of teenage girls. It's as much about the expression of rage as it is about the oppression of it and curiously the most opaque character of all is the narrator herself. It's in the realm of a Henry James novel as the character continuously questions her own involvement in driving the story forward but the realism is heavy in the novel, leading to a slow and believable burn into the supernatural.

Combining psychological suspense with elements of the ghost story, The characters were easy to invest in. Atmospheric, haunting and superbly paced.

I remember reading Jamrach's Menagerie many years ago and so was interested to see how this would compare. This time, in the first part of the book we are taken to 1960's Manchester and our main character is 15 year old Sally who, according to her, had a bright future. This is a well written exploration of what life was like in a school at that time. Sally's best friend is Pamela, a girl who is rebellious, loud and disliked but both pupils and teachers. Together the two girls play truant and go into parts of the building that are out of bounds and although it seems as if Pamela is the one influencing Sally, you are not quite sure. This is school life before the safe-guarding rules of today when bullying was a major sport and the poor victim is Sylvia, a girl which a 'posh accent' who seems out of place. The aim of the game - public humiliation. These are not likeable characters and when a dreadful tragedy hit the school, even though this would haunt her, I didn't feel sympathy for Sally.

This does seem like a coming of age story and we follow Sally as she comes to terms with tragedy, and as she navigates her first serious relationship with Rob, who adores her even though she gives the impression of not reciprocating his feelings.

As the book progresses, we go with Sally as she meanders through different towns and jobs until she returns to her home town and meets up with and moves in with some of her former classmates. During this part of the story, we can still see that Sally is still troubled by the tragedy that she suffered at school, it has never left her and when she moves in to a flat in her former school - the building having been turned into flats - then her anxieties and fears turn into 'supernatural' events. Sally is an unreliable narrator and we are never sure what is real and what isn't. However the author builds up a tension in the third part of the book. We are looking over out shoulders just as Sally is and the ending? I'll leave you to make your mind up about it.

This is a slow burn novel, lulling us into thinking that we have a school story before cleverly leading us into a place where we never know whether what we glimpse in the corner of our eye is real.

Thank you Netgalley and Head of Zeus for allowing me to read this.

This felt like a spooky Catcher in the Rye to me, with an elevated unreliable narrator. It's definitely a slow burn, and it's creepy factor comes through in a more nuanced way than a typical spooky story. Definitely felt gothic at times. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

As other reviewers have mentioned, good depictions of a boarding school in Britain, class issues, and the early teenage years and their issues (parents, popularity, attractiveness, again, class.) The mystery was pretty gripping.

I enjoyed it and should note that I read a lot of mysteries and thrillers, especially ones featuring girls in this age group, and there are many (OK, maybe I have some unresolved issues from those years myself?).

This one stood out for the story, setting, and characters.

Thank you so much to the publisher and #NetGalley for the arc

This is one of those books where I don't want to give a lot away because I don't want to take away from a readers initial experience and I think this is one of those books to go into blind into and not have any expectations!

Having enjoyed two of Carol Birch’s earlier novels – Orphans of the Carnival and the Booker Prize shortlisted Jamrach’s Menagerie – I decided to try her new book, Shadow Girls. I enjoyed this one too, but it’s a very strange novel and not quite what I’d expected!

From the blurb, I had thought this was going to be a ghost story, but for the first half of the book at least, it’s much more of a ‘school story’. Our narrator, Sally, is a fifteen-year-old girl growing up in 1960s Manchester and the time and place are vividly evoked with references to the music, films, fashion and culture of the decade woven into the narrative. Like most girls her age, then and now, Sally’s life revolves around schoolwork and spending time with her friends and her boyfriend, and this is the focus of the first section of the book. Through Sally’s eyes we get to know her best friend, Pamela, a rebellious troublemaker nobody else likes, and their ‘enemy’ Sylvia Rose, a girl from a posh background who is a talented classical singer. She also describes her feelings for Rob, her first serious boyfriend, whom she is starting to have doubts about.

The supernatural element of the story isn’t introduced until surprisingly late in the novel, when Sally has a mysterious encounter with Sylvia that will haunt her for the rest of her life. The pace picks up from this point and it does become the ghost story I had expected – in fact, it’s quite a creepy one, particularly as, like many good ghost stories, it’s never completely clear which of Sally’s experiences are real and which are in her mind.

Despite not much happening for half of the book, I found it all very absorbing and was pulled into Sally’s world from the first page. I’m not sure whether so much build up was really necessary, but I enjoyed it anyway and found the book so difficult to put down that I ended up reading most of it in one day.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

It took me a while to get into this book, because very little of interest happens for the first half, and I found it meandering and slightly directionless.

Then things pick up, but quickly drop off again. I think for fans of slow-building books, this would be a good choice; that just isn’t a particular favourite of mine. It suits the eerie nature of the story, though.

Having said that, I felt the sense of place and time strongly; the author did a great job with those.

Shadow Girls, the latest novel by Carol Birch, is divided into three sections which, in a play on the title, are named after the three parts of a shadow: penumbra, umbra and antumbra. The first two segments of the novel are set in a girls’ secondary school in mid-1960s Manchester. The narrator, Sally, is a fifteen-year-old student preparing for her O-Levels. Like her schoolmates, she is also navigating the challenges of growing up, including recurring doubts about her first serious relationship (with the dependable, level-headed Rob). Sally’s best friend is Pamela, a troubled troublemaker whom no one really seems to like. Under her influence, Sally indulges in rebellious acts. They play truant and venture into areas of the school which are out-of-bounds for students, such as the basement and the greenhouse on the school roof. Their nemesis and long-suffering “victim” is Sylvia Rose, an only child hailing from a posh background, who is also a promising classical singer. In the second part of the book, several uncanny – possibly supernatural – incidents herald a horrific, although not entirely unexpected, tragedy that leaves a mark on the school and on Sally in particular. The final segment in the book is set around twelve years later. After having worked and lived in different parts of England, Sally returns to the area where she grew up and reconnects with several of her old schoolmates. Her past starts to haunt her, leading to a terrifying conclusion. A brief afterword – aptly titled “After” – clears up some of the ambiguity of the final pages.

I was drawn to this novel because of the blurb that describes it as having “elements of the ghost story”. However, Shadow Girls is rather atypical of the genre. Its first part is closer to the “girls school” story. Birch does an exceptional job at recreating the 1960s atmosphere, the (authentically “dated”) expressions used by the students, and the rivalries, friendships and bullying typical of the school environment. However, possibly because that particular world seems alien to this middle-aged male reader, I found this initial segment, well-written as it is, very slow and occasionally downright boring. Indeed, I was sorely tempted to abandon the book. I’m glad I didn’t. The pace picks up steadily in the second segment and, in the final part, we’re more decidedly in “ghost story” territory with Birch pulling out the stops and relying more heavily (and effectively) on the tropes of supernatural fiction. In particular, she makes good use of that ambiguity typical of some of the best ghostly tales. Is there a prosaic explanation for the supernatural events portrayed? Should they be taken literally, or are they the product of mental health issues affecting an unreliable narrator?

Shadow Girls is a book I would recommend, albeit with a warning that whoever reads it for the thrills and chills should be patient and perseverant.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2022/01/shadow-girls-by-carol-birch.html

The brutalities and anxieties of adolescence girlhood have been served well in contemporary fiction and while this adds a slight supernatural edge, the whole thing didn't quite come together sufficiently for me. I also found this very slow: we know from the start that there will be some sort of Carrie-esque public humiliation but it's a long time coming, though the pay-off is suitably traumatic.

What is interesting is the 'aftermath' part of the story in the final third - though, again, there were some logic misses. And it's here that while the ambiguities of haunting versus mental health come to the fore, this elusiveness gets closed down quite definitively in the epilogue section. So a little disappointing for me but still a page-turning exploration of female friendship - and its opposite.

It's a good one, but it's not my type of book. I was expecting to like because I liked the synopsis but it didn't affect me.

‘Shadow Girls’ is a strange, poignant novel which begins as a straightforward exploration of teenage girls’ lives in the 1960s but becomes much more. The author Carol Birch plays with genres and timelines, with perspective and with our expectations.
Sally and her friend Pamela, an opinionated girl whom nobody much likes, enjoy carrying out small rebellious acts to enliven dull school days. Some of these amount to bullying Sylvia, an old-fashioned, only child with a remarkable singing voice. Sally’s parents are extraordinarily hands-off whilst Pamela’s are hands-on when a hard slap is her due. Birch doesn’t dwell on the trio’s backgrounds but the details given allow us to understand why they all do what they do over the course of the narrative.
Above all, this is a story about tragedy left unexpressed, about damaged people and long-lasting guilt. Birch doesn’t shy away from the cruelties inflicted as she explores her teenage girls’ confused identities and, as they grow into adulthood, their discontented schooldays still cast a shadow. Whilst some readers clearly feel that the supernatural elements of the novel mar its credibility, I prefer to see them as a metaphor for the psychological damage caused by guilt and grief. As the adult Sally explains, ‘Inside me was the endless Steppe, lonely and beautiful, that nothing could ever touch.’
Whilst the final pages are a little hackneyed but, overall, this is a beautifully written story which haunts the reader well after the last page is turned.
My thanks to NetGalley and Head of Zeus Apollo for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.