Girl A

Author: Abigail Dean
Publisher: Harper Collins
Reviewer: Beryl Eichenberger
Nuanced, sinister, horrifying, gripping - this psychological thriller is not only a page turner but is thought provoking in the extreme. In our daily devouring of the news there have been terrifying tales of children kept in chains, underground, abused and neglected to the extent that we ask what makes parents so unbelievably cruel to children seemingly conceived in love. Abigail Dean’s debut novel ‘Girl A’ exposes all of this and more as she steadily builds the suspense, drip-feeding 

information in a story that makes your skin crawl and lodges in the crevices of your mind.
Lex Gracie (Girl A) is 15 when she escapes her family ‘House of Horrors’ and exposes the untenable circumstances of her and her siblings. Her religious fanatic Father has descended into complete madness . The compliant, mostly pregnant and weak Mother has allowed the cruelty to escalate as the six siblings are deprived of freedom, light, food and human contact.  What follows is Father’s suicide, a public outcry and the bringing of Mother to justice. With media gobbling at the story the children are mostly protected, but there is always the trickle of information that identifies them as having endured this unspeakable childhood. It is within these bounds that the story explores relationships - of the children and ultimately with their friends and lovers.
The story opens with Lex some 15 years later. She has a good life as a successful lawyer living and working in New York. Returning  to the UK when the imprisoned Mother dies, Lex is the appointed executor of the house on the edge of a North of England moor.  While she has no desire to visit that place or the horrific memories she sees a positive solution – that she and her sister Evie turn the house into a community and rehabilitation centre. But she has to get signed permission from her siblings and therein lies the tale. There has been little sibling communication since ‘the escape’; adoption, new families and circumstances have dictated this.  But Lex and the younger Evie have retained their strong bond through their having shared a bedroom.  Ethan the eldest son has also remained within their orbit, seemingly overcoming the trauma by having an exemplary life as headmaster of a public school.
This is a story where concentration is required as Dean takes you from past to present with speed and skill. Measured information develops the story into an unexpected climax.  We meet each of the siblings - severely damaged Gabriel, bible punching , brittle Delilah, Ethan and his thin veneer, the hidden-from- view Noah, the ethereal Evie and the ghosts that Lex  lives with. Dr K is the understanding, forward thinking psychiatrist who remains in Lex’s life throughout and then there is Ana, Ethan’s gentle fiancée.  We experience the neglected house with its ’tumours of mould’, the ‘Territory’ that Evie and Lex struggle to cross – well constructed and malignant descriptions  add to the ugly picture. 
This is a powerful story, thoughtful yet shocking, bringing with it many surprises as the narrative develops. There is the question of genetics as Dean threads a clever insert of a client that Lex will be working with - raising in her mind the chance of the madness being handed down. It questions the damage lying sometimes dormant through much of a life, until circumstances bring it to the fore. And to what length the mind will protect the victim with a fiction invented to overcome the pain. But overall it is a book of hope as we engage with Lex as she deals with her demons. ​