Unraveller
Frances Hardinge is a British novelist whose debut novel, Fly by Night, won the Branford Boase Award in 2006 ( awarded to the writer and editor of the best debut children’s novel).
In 2015 she won the 2015 Costa Book Award for her novel The Lie Tree, the first time a children’s book was awarded the overall category since Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass in 2001.
Her latest novel, Unraveller, is an otherworldly story of curse making and breaking (the unravelling of the title). Reviewing the book for Just Imagine, Martin Galway writes:
‘It’s a dark novel of dark themes and dark places. It explores the tensions of what it means to be human. It explores what it means to be no-longer-human or never human. It’s in these tensions and in the complexity of feelings of those that straddle the human/inhuman divide that the book offers the most satisfying food for thought.’
Frances joined Nikki Gamble In The Reading Corner to tell us more.
About Unraveller
n a world where anyone can cast a life-destroying curse, only one person has the power to unravel them. Kellen does not fully understand his unique gift but helps those who are cursed, like his friend Nettle, who was trapped in the body of a bird for years.
She is now Kellen’s constant companion and his closest ally. But the Unraveller carries a curse himself, and unless he and Nettle can remove it, Kellen is a danger to everything – and everyone – around him…