(1977 - The Harvester Press Limited)

Jennifer Lash - whose second novel was runner-up for the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize - has now written a stunning book about fear.

Get Down There and Die, which begins quietly in Kensington and climaxes in the west of Ireland, is concerned with that eternal fear ever present within man, which shifts between good and evil, finding its voice in great violence and great violation.

The novel begins when David Carlisle, 19, goes to London to be the general 'dogsbody' in a solicitor's office. He has failed to get into University, and has spent some time in Australia. He is unformed: alert to everything, certain of nothing. He rents a room in Kensington, an ordinary empty room. He starts work and makes the daily journey by tube trains.

Suddenly, one evening among the crush of people, he sees a face, not near but far down the platform. It is terrible - the face of a boy his own age but full of indescribable fear. Is he being attacked, abducted? What is the reason, the cause of that fear in his face? David, forgetting himself, forces his way through the crowd. Something terrible is happening, yet all round there are people who neither see nor care. David Carlisle catches sight of the boy again at the top of the moving stair-case and then he is gone.

David's search for the boy develops fast and powerfully. It takes him into the East End of London and eventually to the west of Ireland. Here, the incredible peace and serenity of this wild landscape is in sharp contrast to the fears that grown in David and he follows and sees and knows.

Press voices:

"Nightmarish novel reminiscent of Graham Greene, except in its lack of sleazy detail."
Irish Times

"An exceptionally interesting writer who has produced one of the strangest and most intriguing novels to have come to my way for a very long time"
Peter Tinniswood, The Times

"Jennifer Lash conveys mental courage perfectly and the writing is distinguished ... She attacks the mystery of suffering with a cool precision"
Jill Neville, Sunday Times

"Jennifer Lash writes very well and her story carries real imaginative conviction"
Glen Cavaliero, Eastern Daily Press