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Scissors, Paper, Stone
Elizabeth Day
4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc in 2011
This eBook edition published by 4th Estate in 2017
Copyright © Elizabeth Day, 2011
Elizabeth Day asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins
Source ISBN: 9780008221775
Ebook Edition © May 2017 ISBN: 9780008221782
Version: 2018-03-06
Praise for Scissors, Paper, Stone
‘Elizabeth Day’s observations of a certain sort of middle-class life […] are altogether brilliant … Moreover, the self-restraint of the plot is as impressive as that of the characterisation: when the cause of the family’s unhappiness is finally revealed, it is all the more unpleasant for being so utterly unexpected’ Spectator
‘[A] tense, sensitive exploration of a mother and daughter's fractured relationship and the man between them’ Marie Claire
‘Deftly unpicks a daughter’s troubled relationship with her mother after her father has lapsed into a coma’ Observer
‘[Scissors, Paper, Stone] has the page-turning compulsion of a thriller combined with the horror of discovering exactly what happens when human behaviour skids from normal to disturbing’ Belfast Telegraph Morning
‘Rips along convincingly … Day reveals the horrible truth behind this ostensibly ordinary family. At this point Day's brilliance as a writer starts delivering a real punch … thoroughly believable’ New Zealand Herald
‘Clever and well-written’ Times Literary Supplement
‘Elizabeth Day has written an absorbing and moving novel in which she has managed to convey the chronic damage that a father, wife and daughter may do to one another. Her writing is both delicate and direct, not an easy combination to effect, but she has pulled it off’ Elizabeth Jane Howard
'A daring, absorbing and beautifully-written story of damage and betrayal, this is an exhilarating and deeply affecting first novel’ Jennie Rooney, author of Inside the Whale
To my parents,
for being nothing like Anne and Charles
Contents
Praise for Scissors, Paper, Stone