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Simon & Schuster UK has bought world, all languages rights in The Gosling Girl, and one further untitled novel, by Jacqueline Roy.
The deal was brokered by Milly Reilly of Jo Unwin Literary Agency with Clare Hey, publishing director at S&S.
The Gosling Girl is Roy’s second novel for adults, the first in more than 20 years. Described as an "urgent, compelling, beautifully written novel", the story centres on a girl who commits a "heinous" crime, trapped in a system of institutional and internalised racism. The synopsis reads: "When Michelle Cameron is released from prison, she must start life again. No one can know that she is the Gosling Girl: the infamous child who killed another child.
"But she is struggling. Her crime was one sensationalised by the media, with the image of the dark-skinned child who killed blonde-haired Kerry Gosling lodged, indelibly, in the public's imagination. Now she is grappling with the secrecy, a new identity and the knowledge that if her past becomes known, she will be hunted. When she strikes up tentative and surprising relationships with three women—her liaison officer, a psychologist desperate to write her biography, and an old friend—life begins to feel a little less hostile.
"However, word gets out about her true identity, that the Gosling Girl is back, and Michelle is unmasked to an angry, waiting world."
Roy was born and raised in London. Her father was Jamaican and her mother was English, and she comes from a family of writers. She moved to Manchester to teach English at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) for many years, specialising in postcolonial literature, and she taught creative writing at MMU's Writing School. As well as writing adult fiction, she has published six books for children. Her first novel, The Fat Lady Sings, has been selected by Bernardine Evaristo to be part of Penguin’s Black Britain: Writing Back series of lost or hard-to-find books, now rediscovered, by Black writers who wrote about Black Britain and the diaspora across the last century.
Commenting on the deal, she said: "This is an important time to be exploring themes of dislocation, loss and racial identities and I am delighted to have Clare Hey as my editor. I am sure that working with Simon & Schuster will bring lots of exciting developments for my writing in the future."
Hey added: "I am delighted to welcome Jacqueline to the Simon & Schuster list. The Gosling Girl is an intelligent, thoughtful and yet completely compulsive novel about one girl whose life is changed forever by an act she commits as a child, and about the world who won’t let her crime be forgiven nor forgotten. Jacqueline is a stunning writer and we are delighted to be bringing her writing to a wide audience."
Reilly said: "I remember clearly the moment I first came across The Gosling Girl and was hooked, instantly. This is an extraordinary novel that is at once politically incisive, gripping and unsettling. I couldn’t be more delighted that Jacqueline’s work has found a home with Clare Hey at Simon & Schuster."
S&S will publish the novel in hardback, e-book and audio in January 2022.