'Exquisite... To be marvelled at.' Guardian

Shortlisted for the Encore Award

Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction

Pearl can be very, very good. More often she is very, very bad. But she’s just a child, a mystery to all who know her. A little girl who has her own secret reasons for escaping to the nearby woods. What might those reasons be? And how can she feel so at home in the dark, sinister, sensual woods, a wonder of secrets and mystery?

Told in vignettes across Pearl’s childhood years, Reasons She Goes to the Woods is a nervy but lyrical novel about a normal girl growing up, doing the normal things little girls do.