Emily Bullock

TO BE LIKE YOU is the debut novel by the immensely talented UEA graduate Emily Bullock.

Set on the Isle of Wight in the sweltering summer of 1962, TO BE LIKE YOU tells the story of Charlie and Carol, twins who join the drift of aimless souls into casual work at a holiday camp. But Charlie and Carol are far from aimless – they are sexual tricksters and blackmailers who have left their Soho turf for new territory.

Charlie has always been dominated by his twin. He is a pawn in her games, but on the night he leaves London he finally sees the one thing he wants in life. Joe. Charlie lays a trap to lure Joe to the Isle of Wight and Joe unwittingly takes the bait. But as Charlie loses control over the events he has set in motion, his secret obsession with the unattainable Joe combines with the twisted dynamic of the twins’ relationship to create a cycle of violence and revenge which demonstrates the destructive power of secrets and illicit love.

This is a powerful work full of profound insight and psychological complexity from a very gifted writer.

All rights available.

Emily's new novel is THE SEPARATE PRINCIPLE

Set just before and at the start of WWII, the year from 1938 to 1939 unravels before Lillian and her husband Leonard. Posted to a Tuberculosis hospital on the Isle of Wight they bring with them the tragedy of their son's death. A wound that festers and drives them apart Who was to blame?

The hospital runs on The Separate Principle, and it turns into an infection that dominates their lives.

Desperate to discover a happiness they could never find in each other, Lillian turns to an old love affair and her lover's young son, also a patient at the hospital. But nothing can comfort her growing sense of isolation and anger. Leonard finds happiness with another man but it can never last. A war is looming, a fight that threatens to tear them apart and destroy those in its path.

Leading their separate lives Lillian, Leonard and young Freddie are thrown onto a collision course with each other, and like the war that will arrive, not all of them will walk away. What begins as the chance for a new start and a fresh snatch at happiness turns into a bitter battle for freedom.

The narrative from their three very different perspectives gathers palpable tension to reveal the full extent of what happened behind those closed walls of the hospital: secrets and lies ready to be blown apart by the declaration of War.