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OPHELIA IN THE BATHTUB

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Published by The Canal Press, October 2026


Available as paperback or e-book (including Kindle Unlimited)

 

My name is Barbara Syms. I am fifteen years and four months old.

I have been locked up in the Hopecliff Clinic with a bunch of teenage loonies. They think I am a loony too. Maybe I am. I don't know. I killed my mum, and that doesn't sound very sane to me. But they insist I didn't. They say it was an accident.

A novel of hope and despair, of the heights and depths of the human spirit, of reliable and unreliable narrators... and of acting, and fanfiction. Whose secrets will be revealed first... and what will be the result when they're laid out in the open for everyone to see?

In Ophelia in the Bathtub, Sandra Bond weaves an astonishing thriller that combines the best and most distinctive elements of Jo Walton's Among Others and Ken Kesey's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.

So if I didn't kill her, like a loony... I must be sane, right? In which case, why am I locked up here?

It's all very confusing.
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“What about Wyatt, eh? King of outer space!”

 

“He’s a sad bastard,” Ophelia said, looking into the middle distance, “but I can see where he’s coming from.”

 

“No way! You don’t believe all that shit about ruling the galaxy? Glen Wyatt hasn’t got enough brains to rule a line on a sheet of paper.”

 

“Oh, not that part, of course. But it’s obvious — obvious to me, anyway — that Wyatt wants to be free, and that... that, I can get behind. I want it, too.” Ophelia chased a blob of cold mashed potato around the edge of her plate with the hopeless plastic hospital fork which had come with her meal.

 

“Everyone wants to be free, I suppose.”

 

“Prisoners most of all,” said Ophelia. She finally caught the potato and transferred it to her mouth, swallowing it with no sign of enjoyment. “And we’re prisoners here, you and me and Wyatt, and Uncle Tom Cobley and all.”

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