The Starving Bride

Look at her. How serene she is in her long white dress, eyes closed like a stone copy of herself. Perhaps she lives on air. We would like a little piece of her – a hank of hair, a pared fingernail slender as a new moon, a wisp of skin peeled from a sunburned shoulder…

England, the near future.

Dumped by her boyfriend, fired from her job and estranged from her parents, Hazel Whitlock signs up for a sideshow act in Blackpool. The seaside resort has revived all the cancelled old favourites and she will be the Starving Bride.

On display in the iconic Blackpool Tower, with a ravenous lion prowling the enclosure, Hazel must lie in silence while strangers view her body.

As the days tick down, thousands are captivated by Hazel's transformation. Some are inspired. Some are obsessed. And some are watching far more closely than they should be.

Hazel's old friend Gilda becomes increasingly worried for her welfare. Councillor Frank Marsh warns that the Tower could collapse – but no one will listen.

As the spectacle spirals and the world outside grows increasingly unstable, Hazel must confront the truth: how far is she willing to go to be seen?

Catherine Chidgey lives in Cambridge and lectures in creative writing at the University of Waikato. The internationally bestselling author of ten novels, she has won the Prize in Modern Letters, the Katherine Mansfield Award, the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship, the Janet Frame Fiction Prize, and the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction twice. Her previous novel, The Book of Guilt, completed a trilogy of novels about twentieth-century totalitarianism.