Next, she moved back to the Midwest to Chicago where she attended the Columbia College Chicago to graduate with her Batchelor’s degree.

She lived on Long Island and in North Carolina, following which he attended Bennington College for a year. Tangerine by Christine Mangan is published by Little, Brown, £14.The American debut author Christine Mangan was born in Detroit, Michigan, she led a nomadic life for quite a long time. The twists and turns of the plot can at times feel predictable, but the author’s attention to the minutiae of her characters’ minds engages the reader to the bitter end. When John goes missing, Alice becomes unmoored, questioning her own sanity. This is achieved through eerie details such as when Lucy glimpses John through a mirror on the wall, The author is most adept at creating a strong feeling of foreboding, a sense of disjuncture, that life is “strangely unsettling”. No, Will Self, the novel isn’t doomed – it’s just remaking itself Samantha Ellis on the books that help define motherhood Read more: The 39 best independent bookshops in the UK and Ireland The reader feels a chill down the spine when Lucy introduces herself as Alice to a stranger (“The word slipped from my mouth easily, as though it were true”). Much of the considerable tension in this novel is created by Lucy’s obsession with Alice and their skewed, claustrophobic, and ultimately destructive friendship. Like Highsmith, Tartt and Flynn, the author excels in portraying the troubled boundaries between selves through themes of obsession, stalking, and otherwise crossing the line in close relationships.

“As if Donna Tartt, Gillian Flynn and Patricia Highsmith had collaborated in a screenplay to be filmed by Hitchcock”, declared Joyce Carol Oates of Mangan’s debut novel, which was reportedly bought for $1.1m it is, indeed, soon to be a major film, produced by George Clooney and starring Scarlett Johansson. Scarlett Johansson will star in the slated film version of ‘Tangerine’. Lucy, however, acts as if “she was entirely certain of who she was” and is in her element in Tangier, her excitement captured in some descriptions – albeit clichéd – of “electrifying” souks.

Read more: 10 debut novels set to make a splash in 2018 Instead, she often stays holed up in her flat, trying to forget the past and worrying that she has made “a complete and utter mess” of the present. The manipulative Lucy “carefully reinserted herself” back into Alice’s life with no mention of the painful past and her part in it – but throughout, the story of the tragedy that occurred seeps through in some skilfully handed narratorial flashbacks.Īlice has not found her feet in her new life in Morocco, where she has moved with her husband John on account of his job.

“As if Donna Tartt, Gillian Flynn and Patricia Highsmith had collaborated in a screenplay to be filmed by Hitchcock”, declared Joyce Carol Oates

Tangerine christine mangan