Homework — Margaret Livesey

Immensely compelling and profoundly chilling, Homework echoes Henry James's Turn of the Screw-it's that eerie, beautifully crafted, and brave in its willingness to illuminate the dark side of childhood and our own most closely guarded notions of innocence and evil. Celia Gilchrist believes that she has finally found the right man in Stephen, but when she moves in with him and his young daughter, Jenny, things begin to go subtly, menacingly wrong. Money disappears, a sweater is ruined, and small, commonplace lies escalate into awkward confrontations. Born in 1953, Margot Livesey grew up in a boys' private school in the Scottish Highlands where her father taught, and her mother, Eva, was the school nurse. After taking a B.A. in English and philosophy at the University of York she spent most of her twenties working in shops and restaurants and learning to write. Her first book, a collection of stories called Learning by Heart, was published by Penguin Canada in 1986. Since then Livesey has had six novels published: Homework, Criminals, The Missing World, Eva Moves the Furniture, Banishing Verona and The House on Fortune Street. Her seventh novel, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, will be published by HarperCollins in January 2012. Margot has taught at Boston University, Bowdoin College, Brandeis University, Carnegie Mellon University, Emerson College, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Tufts University, UC Irvine, the Warren Wilson College MFA program for writers, and Williams College. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the N.E.A., the Massachusetts Artists' Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts. Margot is currently a distinguished writer in residence at Emerson College. She lives with her husband, a painter, in Cambridge, Mass., and goes back to London and Scotland whenever she can.