The Centre of Winter

A fascinating, highly unusual, literary novel of love, obsession and powerful women by the author of the highly acclaimed Wasted . This is the story of a young woman's descent into madness. In an icy northern city, 21-year-old Kate Schiller is a fire going out of control. Mistaking desire for the love she desperately craves, she stumbles into a dangerous world of prostitution, strip joints, heroin, sex and obsessive affairs. Involved with a married woman, caught in the grip of a nightmare past which haunts her sleeping and waking hours, wreaking havoc on the lives around her, and slowly losing her hold on reality, Kate searches ever more frantically for something which will keep her sane, something that will make her feel alive. As the bitter cold of winter sets in, Kate buckles under the weight of her own sadness and fear and goes mad. Kate's voice is a sad one, the voice of a woman hardened by too much knowledge, and the voice of a girl who wants to be loved and doesn't know what the world means. The world of this novel is a world of opposites and extremes, of heat and cold, at the pivot of which is this blistering centripetal force of a woman. This is among the most intense port