Kate Hamer, Crushed with Donna Freed
Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air.
The opening lines of Macbeth could also set the scene in Bath for three adolescent girls bound or intent? on: “double toil and trouble!”
Each of Kate Hamer’s books (The Girl in the Red Coat & The Doll Funeral) starts with a strong image. Crushed, which takes place in crucible shaped Bath and its ancient bubbling, sulphurous core, snuck up on Kate, much like the angels climbing Bath Abbey but when it came, the central image was a body floating down the Avon.
Three teenage girls, isolated and under pressure, come together one sultry summer. Power, obsession, need, naivety and self-absorption lead to disaster. After all, weren’t the Furies once teenage girls?
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