Why a Booktrail?
2000s: She’s watching you, but who’s watching her?
2000s: She’s watching you, but who’s watching her?
Lily Gullick lives with her husband Aiden in a new-build flat opposite an estate which has been marked for demolition. A keen birdwatcher, she can’t help spying on her neighbours.
Until one day Lily sees something suspicious through her binoculars and soon her elderly neighbour Jean is found dead. Lily, intrigued by the social divide in her local area as it becomes increasingly gentrified, knows that she has to act. But her interference is not going unnoticed, and as she starts to get close to the truth, her own life comes under threat.
But can Lily really trust everything she sees?
Two settings here – one a tall, chic flat which becomes the window not just on the world but on to death and murder. The claustrophobic sense of a woman convinced she’s seen one thing and everything else telling her another. This is a London undergoing change – old flats and older buildings are getting demolished with an aim of regenerating the city. The flats opposite the couple’s flats are becoming chic and expensive – families are being priced out of the city. Meanwhile other buildings are getting more and more residents packed inside them – huge ornate buildings are being made into flats. London is splitting in two right before the birdwatcher’s eyes
The book also references the so called Hastings Rarities hoax whereby George Bristow, an English taxidermist and gunsmith of St Leonards-on-Sea succeeded in adding 29 species or subspecies of birds to the British List, and defrauded his clients of some £7000 for specimens on the basis that they were British.
Author/Guide Ross Armstrong Destination: London, Hastings Departure Time: 2000s
Back to Results