Refreshingly original
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The blurb
1973.
Swallow's Farmhouse in deep, rural Norfolk is home to Your People, a commune of free-thinkers and poets seeking a better way. But beneath the veneer of a nurturing, alternative lifestyle, an atmosphere of jealousy and threat is pushing utopia towards the brink of its inevitable collapse.
Raising herself amidst the chaos is a twelve year old survivor, desperately preoccupied with her transition into womanhood. With her mute sister, beloved dog and the re-defining force of her emerging appetites, she marches resolutely towards her future, venturing - with hilarious and horrifying results - through the minefield of an adult world built on hypocrisy and misplaced ideals
The Review
This is one of those reviews where I sort of give you all the reasons why normally I wouldn't like this book and then tell you that actually all these aspects made this a stonkingly great read. What can I say; I'm a complex kind of human...
I quite unexpectedly enjoyed this. First things first - the writing style is odd. Much of it is written in disjointed, fragmented sentences and is in a stream of consciousness style. It definitely takes some getting used to but by the second chapter I had been absorbed enough by the story that the writing style no longer bothered me. In fact, I liked that the style evoked the strong feeling of confusion and detachment we see mirrored in our central character. We never really know whose viewpoint the story is written from which allows us to feel distanced from the action, like a fly on the wall.
Another reason I shouldn't like this book is that there's not a huge amount of plot! Most of the action focuses on a particular period of a few months and actually, there are relatively few events to mark the passing of time. But actually, it focuses on this pivotal moment in a young girl's transition into womanhood and there is a sense that all of the events that do happen are going to affect her deeply and in the end will forever shape the way she perceives the world.
It's clear that there are blurred lines about what is deemed acceptable in this communal living arrangement and whilst the two children are clearly loved to a degree, there is this whole feeling throughout of a childhood not being properly lived. Somehow, this book manages to be both acerbically funny and a tad melancholic at the same time. The adults in this story are so ridiculously earnest sometimes in wanting to pursue their alternative lifestyle, that they cannot see their own hypocrisy. The fact that they secretly resent each other is always bubbling away under the surface, often to comic effect.
Often we know more about what is going on than the children do, as we are able to understand the context behind events that confuse our protagonist (for example that there is an awful lot of bed swopping going on in this house!) Our protagonist sees herself as worldly, but in the end what is most heart wrenching, is her naivety at the behaviour of the adults around her and how she doesn't realise until too late that she is being taken advantage of.
What this book really did, is make me care about the two children in it. I was desperate to know how life turned out for them and their journey kept me hooked. Normally I wouldn't love a book that is so experimental in style, but I am glad that I got it in my surprise bundle from The Book Hive, as I never would have discovered it otherwise.