Larne author Angeline King reads from her book, 'The Secret Diary of Stephanie Agnew'

Larne author Angeline King reads an extract from her book, 'The Secret Diary of Stephanie Agnew'.

Transcript

00:00Hi everyone, this is the new novel. It's called The Secret Diary of Stephanie Agnew

00:06with thanks to Leschnall Press. It's a diary novel and so I'm going to open up

00:12the first page and the diary entry is from Sunday the 4th of June 1995.

00:19Dear William, I speak to you as Daddy speaks to the stars and Mummy speaks to

00:26God. Here in this diary I will record my whispers to you so that when the sky is

00:33inky and the day is ready to be written we will be family. Tomorrow is my first

00:41day of freedom after 14 years of school when I will have time to think and write

00:47and contemplate the future that rests somewhere between mathematics and

00:52English literature. In less than three months I will leave these cool green

00:59fields and shores for university. Destination Scotland, calling unknown.

01:08One thing I'm heart sure of is that I will not be pursuing the third A level, German.

01:15A selection Mummy thought would secure a top-of-the-tower career in Europe in a

01:21company like Siemens where I could be something modern and useful. Mummy has

01:26ambitions you see. It was she who had the six of us flit from Granny Agnew's wee

01:32house on the top of the Ballycraggy Road to this four-bedroom cottage by the

01:38Hurl and Girl of the Sea. Ballygally village where all the intelligentsia and

01:45and la-di-das assemble is advantageous to an 18 year old mathematician, poet and

01:53linguist but it seems at times far far away from home. Our stone cottage sits at

02:02the dark edge of the village close to Ballygally Head, a cliff formed during a

02:09scene of some violent subterraneous commotion or so it was described in the

02:16natural history book I stole from the Ballygally Castle Hotel.