Ketchup Clouds
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''Ketchup Clouds'' is a 2012 teen novel by
Annabel Pitcher Annabel Pitcher (born 1982) is a British children's writer. Background Pitcher was born in a village in West Yorkshire. She studied English Literature at Oxford University. Her first novel, ''My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece'', deals with the ...
. It tells the story of a girl about the age of 15 who has a dark secret she is afraid to confess to anyone but her pen pal, a murderer on Death Row. It won the
Waterstone's Children's Book Prize The Waterstones Children's Book Prize is an annual award given to a work of children's literature published during the previous year. First awarded in 2005, the purpose of the prize is "to uncover hidden talent in children's writing" and is there ...
.


Synopsis

''Ketchup Clouds'' is written in a series of letters from "Zoe", her chosen alias, who lives on fiction road in England to Mr. S Harris, a criminal on death row in America. Zoe initially starts writing to Mr. Harris specifically because she believes they must share the same guilt as, according to her view, they both killed a person they loved. The events leading up to Zoe's "crime" begin around the end of the term before summer break. After her father receiving news that her grandfather is ill, tensions in her home begin to rise. For reasons unknown to Zoe, her mother seems to resent her grandfather and alludes to the idea that he is the reason why her sister, Dot, ended up ill and is currently deaf as a result. Zoe can say little to understand her mother's resentment towards him as she, Dot and her other sister, Soph have not seen him in years. Regardless, Zoe's sole mission is to make it to Max Morgan's end of term party. At the party she meets a 'boy ..brown eyes ndmessy blond hair' whom she feels she has chemistry with and in which she engages in sexual activity with Max Morgan and later on, a relationship. She soon finds out that the brown-eyed boy, Aaron, is Max's brother and unbeknown to Max, there are still feelings between them. It is the accident that follows after he discovers Zoe and Aaron together that lead her to identify both with Mr Harris as a murderer and his unfaithful wife whom she calls a "scarlet woman" and believes she deserved her death.


References

{{reflist 2012 British novels Orion Books books