The Black Country

By Kerry Hadley-Pryce

Christmas 2015: The top 10 debut fiction books, The Independent

Maddie and Harry: she’s an estate agent, he’s a teacher. They’ll say they live in the Black Country. They’ll say how they met Jonathan Cotard, explain how they later argued, had a car accident, thought they’d killed someone. Thought they had. And as they search for a truth, they’ll tell us their secrets, their mistakes. And we’ll judge them. We'll judge Harry's fling with a schoolgirl and Maddie's previous life. We'll judge the nature of love and violence, good and evil. The Black Country. For Maddie and Harry, it’s darker than it should be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Salt
• Release date: Sep 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781784630508

Kerry Hadley-Pryce

Kerry Hadley-Pryce was born in the Black Country. She worked nights in a Wolverhampton petrol station before becoming a secondary school teacher. She wrote her first novel, The Black Country, whilst studying for an MA in Creative Writing at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University, for which she gained a distinction and was awarded the Michael Schmidt Prize for Outstanding Achievement 2013–14. She is currently a PhD student at the University of Wolverhampton, researching Psychogeography and Black Country Writing. Gamble is her second novel.

Reviews for The Black Country

[tina1969_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Maddie and Harry, a couple who live in The Black Country. They are a couple who have problems. On the way home one night, an argument leads to a car accident, leaving the couple thinking they have killed someone.This book I found unusual. The story follows Harry and Maddie but told by a narrator. No chapters in a short book less than two hundred pages, but for me felt longer.Set in The Black Country, which is where I am from and live, with a few places I recognise instantly like Merry Hill, Stourbridge, Birmingham and its BT tower. Just want to say at this point The Black Country has a lot to offer and isn't grim.To say anything about this book at all would give a lot away and reading the blurb on the back of the book does give away alot. What I will say is that the story is dark. I found the book at times uncomfortable with part of the story. What the story did have was that certain something that makes a reader want to continue to find out what is going to happen. For me I was waiting for that big reveal at the end, which did happen but I had to double check, did I really just read that. I liked this book in parts, the rest I felt uncomfortable and some parts just totally confused. I would read the authors other work also set in The Black Country.