'Once I had cleared the bottles away and washed the blood off the floor, I needed to get out of the flat.'
SKIN DEEP
CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR AND RADIO LISTENER’S CHOICE AT THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2018
Liz Nugent's novel is the dark, twisted and shocking story of what takes Cordelia from an island childhood in Ireland to ruins in Nice.
Cordelia Russell has been living on the Côte d'Azur for ten years, posing as a posh English woman fallen on hard times. But her luck is running out. Desperate to escape her grotty flat and grim reality, Cordelia spends a night at a glittering party. Surrounded by the young, beautiful and privileged she feels her age and her poverty. As dawn breaks she stumbles home through the back streets. Even before she opens her door she can hear the flies buzzing. It hasn't taken long for the corpse in her bedroom to commence decomposing ...
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“The sinister new novel from the No 1 bestselling author of Unravelling Oliver and Lying in Wait”
“Liz Nugent’s heroine is impossible to like. Delia Russell is selfish, manipulative, self-indulgent, an inveterate liar, uncaring even of her child. Yet somehow Nugent’s absorbing, beautifully written tale turns Delia into an interesting, almost sympathetic character. Her childhood is spent on a tiny Irish island, her father is besotted by her. She realises early that she’s very beautiful. Most of her family die in a fire and there follows, among many other reversals, an unwanted pregnancy, loss of money and drug addiction. She ends up living a pretend life in Nice. There’s a death. Nugent has won several awards in her native Ireland. Skin Deep deserves to be her breakthrough in Britain.”
— Marcel Berlins - The Times (UK)
“Liz Nugent’s extraordinary, incendiary new novel….What a magnificent dark monster of a book Skin Deep is.”
— Irish Times
“Skin Deep is utterly compelling...Nugent displays to the full her storytelling gifts”
“Skin Deep is a guilty rush of a novel…it’s a blast. The author of Unravelling Oliver and Lying in Wait has done it again. Priority reading.”
— Nadine O’Regan, Sunday Business Post
Pod skórą
Skin Deep published in Poland by Wielka Litera
“Liz Nugent’s Skin Deep (Penguin) is the perfect holiday read for those who like their escapism on the darker side. If Patricia Highsmith were Irish she might well have come up with this tale of a scarred woman who taints all she touches while remaining as charismatic as she is enigmatic.”
— Ian Rankin
“Just finished SKIN DEEP by @lizzienugent. Superb thriller. Chilling, beautifully-written, shocking, twisty, intelligent, GRIPPING. Hints of Muriel Spark, Gillian Flynn, Patricia Highsmith. Absolutely LOVED IT.”
— Will Dean
“Monumentally good. Liz Nugent is a beautiful writer and among the very best storytellers in the world.”
— Donal Ryan
“I loved, loved, loved Skin Deep - the compassion of it, the beauty of the language, how glamour and horror intersect, how the tension twists tighter and tighter and is brilliantly.”
— Marian Keyes
“The finest psychological thriller writer currently at work - no one gets under the skin of monstrous characters like she does.”
— Tammy Cohen
“Bloody brilliant!”
— Denise Mina
“Dazzling…chilling, mesmerising and, ultimately, devastating. Pure storytelling genius.”
— Mark Edwards
“A triumph, from first page to last!”
— Sarah Hilary
“Wow! I am lost in admiration - Liz Nugent's storytelling is a wonderful feat of imagination, totally gripping, with a fascinating character at its heart.”
— Sabine Durrant
“Her darkest book yet - a compelling one-sitting read.”
— Sinead Crowley
“Utterly gripping, fast paced, and featuring my favourite sociopathic female character since Lady Macbeth.”
— Louise O’Neill
“Her darkest book yet - a compelling one-sitting read.”