Tabitha Suzuma
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Tabitha Suzuma was born in London, the eldest of five children. She attended a French school in the UK and grew up bilingual. However, she hated school and would sit at the back of the class and write stories, which she got away with because her teachers thought she was taking notes. Aged fourteen, Tabitha left school against her parents' wishes. She continued her education through distance learning and went on to study French Literature at King's College London.
After graduating, Tabitha trained as a primary school teacher and whilst teaching full-time, wrote her first novel.
A NOTE OF MADNESS tells the story of seventeen-year-old Flynn, a piano prodigy who is diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
In 2004 Tabitha Suzuma left classroom teaching to divide her time between writing and tutoring. This gave her time to write her next four novels:
FROM WHERE I STAND - a psychological thriller about Raven, a deeply disturbed teenager in foster care who self-harms and harbours a dreadful secret.
WITHOUT LOOKING BACK - about teenage dance sensation Louis, who suddenly finds himself uprooted from his home and whisked abroad on holiday by his mentally unstable father, until he sees his face on a missing person's poster.
A VOICE IN THE DISTANCE - a sequel to A NOTE OF MADNESS about Flynn and his continuing struggle to cope with his bipolar disorder without jeopardising his career or losing the girl he loves.
FORBIDDEN - Maya and Lochan are in love... But they are brother and sister.
Published in six different languages, this is her most controversial and heart-breaking novel to date.
HURT (out Sept 2013) - At seventeen, Matheo Walsh is Britain's most promising diving champion. He is wealthy, popular - and there's Lola, the girlfriend of his dreams. But then there was that weekend. A weekend he cannot bring himself to remember. All he knows is that what happened has changed him. Mathéo is faced with the most devastating choice of his life. Keep his secret, and put those closest to him in terrible danger. Or confess, and lose Lola for ever . . .
Tabitha Suzuma's books have been nominated for a number of awards including the Carnegie Medal, the Waterstone's Book Prize, the Jugendliteraturpreis and the Branford Boase Book Award. She has won the Young Minds Award, the Stockport Book Award, and the Premio Speciale Cariparma for European Literature.
“What else could he possibly have done? What choices did he ever have?”
“It's horrible being ashamed of someone you care about; it eats away at you. And if you let it get to you, if you give up the fight and surrender, eventually that shame turns to hate.”
“I don't know when it started - this thing - bit it's growing, muffling me, suffocating me like poison ivy. I grew into it. It grew into me. We blurred at the edges, became an amorphous, seeping, crawling thing.”
“There are no laws, no boundaries on feelings.We can love each other as much and as deeply as we want.No one, Maya, no one can ever take that away from us.”
“At the end of the day it's about how much you can bear, how much you can endure. Being together, we harm nobody; being apart, we extinguish ourselves.”
“It's always nice being fancied. It's always nice being wanted. Even it it's by the wrong person.”
“Out of the millions and millions of people that inhabit this planet, he is one of the tiny few I can never have.”
“Any guy, even imaginary, would just feel like second best. Second best to what? I don't even have an image of the perfect boyfriend. I just know he must exist. Because I have all these feelings-love, longing, wanting to be touched, dreaming of being kissed-yet no one to focus them on.”
“We can love each other.' I swallow hard to ease the constriction in my throat. 'There are no laws, no bundaries on feelings. We can love each other as much and as deeply as we want. No one, Maya, no one can never take that away from us.”
“This is the definition of happiness: a whole day stretching out ahead of me, beautiful in its emptiness and simplicity.”
“How-how can we make it against the whole world?”
“How can something so wrong feel so right?”
“As the light begins to intensify, so does my misery, and I wonder how it is possible to hurt so much when nothing is wrong.”
“I might appear confident and chatty, but I spend most of my time laughing at jokes I don't find funny, saying things I don't really mean - because at the end of the day that's what we're all trying to do: fit in, one way or another, desperately trying to pretend we're all the same.”
“He shakes his head with a slow smile. You'd better be right. If the phone rings, I'm unpluggining it, I swear to God-“You'd do that to your five-year-old sister?“ I gasp in mock outrage.For one whole night alone? Jesus, Maya, I'd sell her to the gypsies!”
“You've always been my best friend, my soul mate, and now I've fallen in love with you too. Why is that such a crime?”
“You can close your eyes to the things you do not want to see, but you cannot close your heart to the things you do not want to feel.”