She might have been a Mary-Sue

January 10, 2009 8:41 AM

Help me identify a novel about a female student in Edinburgh, her boyfriend with acne scars (referred to as 'my soft-scarred angel') who used to buy her nice underwear, and some kind of traumatic event in her past (either parental or some kind of mental trauma) that kept coming back to affect her. It was printed in the '90s and googling the details I know brings up nothing!

Memory says the heroine might have had a traditional name like Elizabeth or Helen, and that the title had the word 'beast' in it, but I'm not 100% sure on that one.

posted by mippy to Society & Culture (6 answers total)

Best answer: Your description doesn't ring any bells for me. I recently had some luck finding the title of a book I was looking for in the Abe Book's Booksleuth forums.
posted by sciencegeek at 9:59 AM on January 10, 2009

Doesn't exactly ring bells for me either but it does sound vaguely McCall'ish in nature. A good percentage of his books are based in Edinburgh. You might want to browse through his bibliography (on Wikipedia) to see if anything jumps out.
posted by purephase at 11:24 AM on January 10, 2009

Response by poster: No, it was a female author. Thanks though.
posted by mippy at 6:55 AM on January 11, 2009

Can you provide more information? Was it hardback or paperback? Do you remember anything about the cover? Do you remember the author's name at all? Where did you find the book? In Scotland? In a store or library? About how many pages was it? Could it have been a memoir, not a novel?
posted by xenophile at 12:32 PM on January 12, 2009

Whoops...forgot to add: was it a genre novel, such as a mystery? For some reason, tons of mysteries are set in Edinburgh. And do you know if the author was from Edinburgh or somewhere else?
posted by xenophile at 1:20 PM on January 12, 2009

Response by poster: It was definitely a novel, it was paperback, the cover was dark and swirly, I got it out the library and it was contemporary fiction, rather than an old book. I don't think it was a genre novel though there was a crime/mystery element.
posted by mippy at 2:42 AM on March 5, 2009