Prep meets The Virgin Suicides in a haunting coming-of-age story for the digital generation and an examination of the hypocrisy of small town life, where no one quite knows where rumour ends and truth begins

Adamsville wasn’t a place that people came to. It was a place you were from, where you were born, where you were raised, where you stayed…

Before Carolyn Lessing arrived, nothing much had ever happened in Adamsville, Alabama. Each week, at dinner tables and in the high school assembly, everyone would pray for the football team to win. Each year, the Adams High hotlist would be updated, and girls would rise and fall within its ranks. Each day, everyone lived by the unwritten rules that cheerleaders did not hang out with the swim team, seniors did not date freshmen and the blistering heat was something that should never be remarked upon. But then the new girl came.

All Carolyn’s social media could reveal was that she had moved from New Jersey, she had 1075 friends – and she didn’t have a relationship status. In beach photos with boys who looked like Abercrombie models she seemed beautiful, but in real life she was so much more. She was perfect.

This was all before the camera crews arrived, before it became impossible to see where rumour ended and truth began, and before the Annual Adamsville Balloon Festival, when someone swore they saw the captain of the football team with his arm around Carolyn, and cracks began to appear in the dry earth.

Sarah Bannan, was born in 1978 in upstate New York. She moved frequently when she was growing up, living in Texas, in Florida and in Alabama, where she attended high school. She graduated from Georgetown University in 2000 and then moved to Ireland, where she has lived ever since. She has worked in various roles in the arts and, since 2007 she has been Head of Literature with the Arts Council. In 2010, she took part in the Faber Academy’s novel-writing course.
@sarahkeegs