Gold
Authors: Chris Cleave
WHAT WOULD YOU SACRIFICE FOR THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE?
KATE AND ZOE
met at nineteen when they both made the cut for the national training program in track cycling—a sport that demands intense focus, blinding exertion, and unwavering commitment. They are built to exploit the barest physical and psychological edge over equally skilled rivals, all of whom are fighting for the last one tenth of a second that separates triumph from despair.
Now at thirty-two, the women are facing their last and biggest race: the 2012 Olympics. Each wants desperately to win gold, and each has more than a medal to lose.
Kate is the more naturally gifted, but the demands of her life have a tendency to slow her down. Her eight-year-old daughter Sophie dreams of the Death Star and of battling alongside the Rebels as evil white blood cells ravage her personal galaxy—she is fighting a recurrence of the leukemia that nearly killed her three years ago. Sophie doesn’t want to stand in the way of her mum’s Olympic dreams, but each day the dark forces of the universe seem to be massing against her.
Devoted and self-sacrificing Kate knows her daughter is fragile, but at the height of her last frenzied months of training, might she be blind to the most terrible prognosis?
Intense, aloof Zoe has always hovered on the periphery of real human companionship, and her compulsive need to win at any cost has more than once threatened her friendship with Kate—and her own sanity. Will she allow her obsession, and the advantage she has over a harried, anguished mother, to sever the bond they have shared for more than a decade?
Echoing the adrenaline-fueled rush of a race around the Velodrome track,
Gold
is a triumph of superbly paced, heart-in-throat storytelling. With great humanity and glorious prose, Chris Cleave examines the values that lie at the heart of our most intimate relationships, and the choices we make when lives are at stake and everything is on the line.
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR
GOLD
BY
#1
NEW YORK TIMES
BESTSELLING AUTHORCHRIS CLEAVE
“Cleave goes for the gold and brings it home in his thrillingly written and emotionally rewarding novel. . . . [He] pulls out all the stops getting inside the hearts and minds of his engagingly complex characters. The race scenes have true visceral intensity, leaving the reader feeling breathless. . . . From start to finish, this is a truly Olympic-level literary achievement.”
—
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
*
STARRED REVIEW“After the enormous popular success of his second novel,
Little Bee,
Cleave turns to the world of Olympic speed cyclists to explore the shifting sands of ambition, loyalty and love. . . . [Kate’s] little girl Sophie is the novel’s real heart. Cleave has a gift for portraying difficult children who pull every heartstring . . . he knows how to captivate.”—
KIRKUS REVIEWS
*
STARRED REVIEW
EXPERIENCE CHRIS CLEAVE’S
INCENDIARY
AND
LITTLE BEE
“STUNNING.”
—
THE NEW YORK TIMES“BRILLIANT . . . A HAUNTING WORK OF ART.”
—
NEWSWEEK
“
LITTLE BEE
WILL BLOW YOU AWAY.”—
THE WASHINGTON POST“HEARTWARMING AND HEARTBREAKING.”
—
THE BOSTON GLOBE
© LOU ABERCROMBIE
CHRIS CLEAVE
is the author of
Incendiary
and the #1
New York Times
bestseller
Little Bee
. He lives with his wife and three children in Kingston-upon-Thames, England.
Visit
www.chriscleave.com
or follow him on Twitter
@chriscleave
MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
• THE SOURCE FOR READING GROUPS •
JACKET DESIGN AND ILLUSTR ATION BY ROBERTO DE VICQ DE CUMPTICH
COPYRIGHT © 2012 SIMON & SCHUSTER
Also by Chris Cleave
Little Bee
Incendiary
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