An accomplished and sensitive writer but of all her lovely books I don’t think she has written another as good as this, her first. It’s about an irritating city girl who takes to the backpackers’ trail and slowly has her narrow-mindedness squeezed out of her. The book changes gear once she believes she has a serial killer on her tail.
Tansy plans to go travelling with her boyfriend after her alcoholic mother dies. At the last minute he bows out and she finds herself drunk and coked-up - as ever - on a plane to Vietnam and wondering why. Will she return to London skinny, tanned and wise, as planned?
Emily Barr worked as a journalist in London but always hankered after a quiet room and a book to write. She went travelling for a year, which gave her an idea for a novel set in the world of backpackers in Asia. This became Backpack, an adult thriller which won the WH Smith New Talent Award, and she has since written eleven more adult novels published in the UK and around the world.
The One Memory of Flora Banks is her first novel for young adults. She lives in Cornwall with her partner and their children.
