![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Nevertheless, he ends up befriending the girls and taking them in, and the plight of their new family is pretty much the focus of the book. They’ve been digging for days and he cannot imagine what they are doing for Christmas because he hasn’t seen the parents in weeks. So on Christmas Eve, they dig a shallow grave for their father and stash their mother in a coal bunker.įrom his house next door, Lennie notices something fishy going on in the girls’ garden. Rather than risk foster care, they prefer to wait until Marnie turns 16 and can legally care for Nelly. The story opens in Glasgow, where the abused and neglected sisters have decided not to report the deaths of their drug-addicted parents to authorities. Their elderly gay neighbor, Lennie, is the third narrator, delivering most of his monologues to his late partner. Marnie is the primary narrator - rough, tough and fiercely protective of sister, Nelly, whose quaint narrative voice provides a good contrast. The book is structured in three separate voices, which deliver the story in monologue form. Author Lisa O’Donnell began her career as a playwright, and her debut novel The Death Of Bees owes something to that discipline. Similarly, when Marnie, 15, and Nelly, 12, bury their parents in the back garden, you wait with every page for the moment of discovery. ![]() Chekhov famously observed that if a loaded pistol appears in the first act, it should certainly be fired in the second. ![]()
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