Description
Book SynopsisLife isn't easy for Pen Flowers. Her mum's agoraphobia is so bad that she can barely leave the house, while her father is spending more and more time working away, and her best friend is hanging out with the class bully. It’s all getting too much. But when she ‘goes mad’ in dance class, she finds a language to express the pent-up emotions seething inside her. She takes to climbing out of her bedroom window in the middle of the night to dance in the empty streets and sets off a chain of events that will change everything. Sally-Anne Lomas's debut - the first in her acclaimed On Fire trilogy - is a word-of-mouth triumph. In Pen Flowers she has created an archetypal character for our age - determined, passionate, ambitious, loyal, vulnerable, resilient. Strap yourself in for a page-turning epic you’ll fall in love with.
Trade Review'A gripping story, full of honesty, energy, heartache and joy. I love this book. Sally-Anne Lomas is a new and powerful writer.' Yvvette Edwards, MAN Booker Prize Longlisted author of A Cupboard Full of Coats and The Mother, 'Wonderful. I couldn't put it down. Magical. funny, scary, heartbreaking, and joyous!.' Iain B MacDonald, Director of Shameless, Wayne and Mansfield Park, 'An exhilarating, funny, heartwarming debut that will inspire you to follow your dreams.' C. J. Flood, author of Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers, Written with buoyancy and wit, with a turn of phrase that had me chuckling and snorting with laughter, Live Like Your Head's on Fire is a wonderful coming-of-age novel about discovering and following your dreams. Pen's journey from schoolgirl to dancer is full of comedy, pain, embarrassment, longing and passion but what Lomas captures so well are the uncertainties and shifting friendships of adolescence. And in Pen's new friends, the vulnerable but dangerous Melody and the irrepressible optimist Vivienne, Lomas has created two real-as-life characters whom you can't help but warm to. This is a moving, satisfying debut.' Richard Lambert, poet, novelist, and author of The Wolf Road
