BOOKSELLER INFORMATION
Publication Date: 20-Jun-11 | ISBN: 9781844717255 | Trim Size: 198 x 129 mm | Extent: 368pp | Format: Paperback
UK & International Distribution: 
| Publishing Status: Active
SYNOPSIS
SHORTLISTED FOR THE AUTHORS’ CLUB BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2012
In the house where Marie lives, the cutlery is running wild …
Madness and fairy story creep hand in hand in this darkly comic tale. At the top of a narrow driveway there is a shambling Victorian house full of dust and stairs. The walls inside are ancient emulsion, sloughing off the distemper walls in gorgeous ribbons.
The mice that infest the dining room chimney-breast are living out their own dreams and nightmares, learning voodoo and the meaning of love and forgiveness. In The Knife Drawer, dead bodies miraculously vanish as if scraped to nothing by pudding spoons.
Marie’s mother has rather lost her wits since she did away with her husband. She could swear they’re out to get her; even the house gets messy on purpose, all by itself. Marie’s twin is living in a hole in the back-garden, small and round as a cherry pip, waiting to be discovered.
In The Knife Drawer the steak knives grow so hungry that they scream. When the children murder the rent man, things get a little out of hand …
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Prologue: Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse; PART ONE; Knife; The Mother; Mice; House; The Mother; Mice; The Mother; The Mother; Mice; House; PART TWO; Marie; The Mother; Mice; Marie; The Mother; Mice; Child; Marie; Mice; Child; Mice; Marie; Mice; Marie; The Mother; Mice; Marie; Knife; The Mother; Mice; Marie; Child; Rent Man; Marie; The Mother; Mice; Marie; The Mother; Knives; Mice; Child; Mice; Mice; Marie; Knife; The Mother; Marie; The Mother; Child; Marie; Mice; Marie; Knife; PART THREE; Marie; Mice; Knife; Marie; Mice; Marie; Knife; Marie; Mice; Marie; Knife; Marie; Mice; Rent Man; Marie; Mice; House; Marie; Mice; Marie; Mice; Acknowledgements
PRAISE FOR THIS BOOK
“Padrika Tarrant’s imagination is not a comfortable place to be, but it is darkly addictive.” —Sarah Bower Ink Sweat and Tears blog
“Her language is both precise and arrestingly strange.” —Nicholas Clee The Guardian
“Tarrant’s stories are images trapped and corralled, temporarily, and put on brief display before they slip off of the page and back into the wilds from which they came.” —Laura Benedict Notes from the Handbasket blog
“Man Booker juries like small publishers and début novelists, so how about this as the wild card? Tarrant is the author of a collection of (very short) short stories, Broken Things, which demonstrated her sensitivity, originality and keen sense of the darkness of life. All elements to the fore in this creepy, gothic first novel about a house and its mice.” —Suzi Feay We Love This Book
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Padrika Tarrant was born in 1974. Emerging blinking from an honours degree in sculpture, she found herself unhealthily fixated with scissors and the animator Jan Svankmajer. She won an Arts Council Escalator award in 2005 and has been working more seriously since then. The Knife Drawer is her second full length book; Broken Things, a collection of shorts, was published by Salt (2007). Padrika quite likes sushi, although she tends to pick the fish out. She hates the smell of money.
