Ottakar’s Book of the Month
"A terrifying warning
against the dangers of religious cults"
Published by Hodder Oct 2005
Q: What is it about?
A: Matilda has finished school and is spending a year before going to university. To fund a planned trip to South America, she goes to work on a fruit farm in Devon. She’s looking forward to endless freedom - her childhood has been hard and sometimes sad. Matilda was five when her brother died and she remembers that time with great pain - she suffered too, but no one ever properly let her grieve or understood her. And after her brother’s death, her parents were so desperate not to lose Matilda too that they never gave her any freedom, and they forgot to show her that they loved her. Now she is desperate to get away and have fun.
When the people who run the fruit farm offer her love and understanding, she swallows it gladly. She ignores the doubts, the warnings from other workers that these people are weird. Certainly, they seem very religious, but Matilda is taken in by their love and believes them to be good people. However, this is a very, very sinister religious cult.
Will she realise what they are planning before it is too late? Or will she decide that the love and comfort they offer is worth any price?
There’s another strand running through the book: it’s set 25 years later, in prison, where the cult leader is coming to the end of his 25 year sentence for mass murder. He is being visited by an old woman. He is clearly trying to manipulate her. But is she also trying to manipulate him? Something sinister is going on. Both are waiting for the day of his release, but for different reasons. It’s a battle of wills - and who will win? I will keep you guessing till the final dramatic moment!
You also learn some terrible things from his own childhood. But does that excuse what he has done? Does anything excuse what he has done?
Q: Why Passionflower?
A: Because the people in the cult are growing extraordinary passionflowers. They use the nectar from these flowers to make a hallucinatory drug. Also, passionflowers have religious significance and this is a book full of religious comment. When you get to the last scene in the prison, you might be interested to know that I did not know about the religious significance of passionflowers until the middle of the scene, when I happened to look them up in an encyclopedia.
Q: Is this a book against religion?
A: No. It’s a book against people who stop asking questions once they find faith. I believe you have to continue to ask questions, to use your own mind and find your values. You can’t simply fall back into the comfort of religion. That, in my view, is how many of the problems caused by religion arise: people fall into the habit of saying, ’I am right: God says so.’
Q: It sounds a very bleak book - is it?
A: Actually, no! It’s full of warmth and pleasure. It’s a book of opposites: the heat of a gorgeous summer and the chilling nature of the massacre; love and hate; good and evil; freedom and imprisonment. I can’t tell you too much without giving away many secrets from the story, but this is a book which will uplift you, not depress you!
NOTE: This book is NOT about the Jonestown Massacre of 1978, but if you don’t believe that a religious cult could plan a mass suicide, then you should research that terrible event on the internet. It happened when I was 17 years old, and I have never stopped wondering how people, adults, could allow themselves to be so brainwashed by the views of one man that they would kill themselves - and their children.
Main reviews
The Bookseller
"In a fiction market teeming with excellent writing, Nicola Morgan rounds off what must be one of the most prolific of publishing years with The Passionflower Massacre. She has launched two non-fiction titles, Blame My Brain and The Leaving Home Survival Guide, but of her four teenage novels, this is her most assured. It’s a troubling story of a girl’s slide into a religious cult. But like all Morgan’s fiction, there are twists and turns which give her work a challenging edge for readers"
Ottakar’s Book of the Month - review by Nic Knight
"Dark and foreboding, The Passionflower Massacre is a fast paced thriller that tells the disturbing story of a long hot summer in 2004 when 18 year old Matilda journeys south to Devon to work on a fruit farm.
The farm is run by beautiful, happy people who live in a wonderful house called Heaven, overlooking the fruit fields. All seems well until Matilda’s newfound friend Matthew disappears without a trace. Did he find out something about The Beautiful People? Something about their beliefs that they didn’t want anyone to know about?
The tension builds to a terrifying climax as Matilda enters a world that is not what it claims to be"
Fresh Magazine - review by 15-year-old reader
"Nicola Morgan cleverly intertwines the two plots, which swap between eah other. There is a clever twist at the end, that will surprise you. Overall, I found this book enthralling."
Fresh Magazine - review by Lindsey Fraser
"The Passionflower Massacre is Nicola Morgan’s fourth teenage novel in as many years. Once again, Morgan explores new narrative territory and once again she does so with such confidence that we’re drawn into the book from the opening sentence. Matilda feels liberated from her strained family circumstances and the strictures of school life as she settles into a summer job on a fruit farm in Devon. But unwittingly she trades one form of constraint for another much more sinister version, as she is drawn into the religious sect which runs the farm. The main story is effectively a long flashback; Morgan provides tantalising glimpses of a future story in a series of unsettling interludes with which she punctuates the novel."
Books for Keeps - four star review
"Gripping and well-written, this book consolidates Morgans’ reputation as an exciting new talent."
Writeaway
"...an intriguing tale with an unexpected and dramatic twist at the end.... The literary style ...is seductive."
LoveReading4Kids website - recommendation by Julia Eccleshare
"The vulnerability of adolescents who want to belong is sharply captured in this scary story..."
The Herald - review by Anne Johnstone
"Matilda longs for freedom, which makes her easy meat for what turns out to be a sinister cult, whose manipulative leader is planning a mass suicide. A second storyline is set 25 years on when, for reasons we later discover, ....(an old woman)... befriends the cult leader in prison. A taut, well-constructed story that explores many issues, including freewill and forgiveness.
