Ellie Fleck has a question for everything, except the one she
cannot ask.
Where have they taken her mother?
Carmen Marcus lives in the Victorian spa town of Saltburn-by-the-Sea. Her writing has been described as 'crackling dangerously with inherited magic yet achieving contemporary vitality'. She is in much demand as a performance poet and has appeared at the Royal Festival Hall. Recently she has been commissioned by BBC Radio 3's Verb New Voices. How Saints Die is her first novel, and as a work in progress it won New Writing North's 'Northern Promise' Award.
The dramatic and metaphorical strands of Marcus’s narrative are
densely woven, and Ellie is a winning protagonist… But it is the
sensitively drawn sorrows and vulnerabilities of the novel’s adults
that are perhaps most affecting
*Daily Mail*
A magic-tinged look at adult problems through the eyes of a
child.
*Emerald Street*
A soaring success; beautiful and devastating… In graceful prose,
Marcus sketches an image of the North Yorkshire coast then adds the
snap of the cold wind, the sting of sea spray, the hotness of
welling tears. The book is stunningly evocative – of a time, of a
place, of childhood, and of what it means not to fit in… This book
is beautiful, from cover to core.
*The Skinny*
A poignant and powerful exploration of mental health, poverty and
identity, all seen through the eyes of a child… Marcus builds a
compelling world which combines the mundane with the mystical, the
domestic with the mythic… Marcus has created a memorable young
heroine who possesses the same kind of innocent intelligence,
forthright self-assurance and aching vulnerability as Harper Lee’s
Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird… A heart-warming and deeply
affecting portrayal of a very special father-daughter
relationship
*Yorkshire Post*
In How Saints Die Carmen Marcus announces herself as a powerful and
original talent. This is a novel as restless, as seductive and as
dangerous as the sea that forms the backdrop to the story, while in
Ellie Fleck Marcus has created one of the great child protagonists.
A compelling story with a warm heart written in language that is
both vivid and raw. I loved this book.
*Stephen May*
Remarkable and compelling… An incredibly moving, piercingly
well-observed account of adult mental breakdown and its
reverberations as seen from a child’s perspective
*Yorkshire Post*
Carmen Marcus is a North Yorkshire poet, and I enjoyed her first
novel, How Saints Die. Ten-year-old Ellie is the daughter of a
fisherman who struggles to cope when her mum becomes unwell, and
her narrative is haunted by seafarers’ legends.
*Big Issue Books of the Years*
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