Since winning the Costa prize for best first novel in 2008 with The Outcast, Sadie Jones has become known for well-crafted plots exploring isolation, shame and troubled families. In Amy and Lan, she sticks with some similar themes but shakes things up by using two child narrators to tell their own stories.
As the seasons spiral past, the writing fizzes with childish energy
‘Me and Amy are both seven now,’ says Lan, kicking things off in a chapter called ‘Halloween’, which alternates between his voice and Amy’s. They are friends, not siblings, and live on the same West Country farm. Their mothers left the city for the good life as fledgling farmers when they were both pregnant.
By autumn 2005, when the story starts, there are three families, two lodgers, plus goats, dogs, turkeys and a cat at Frith Farm, which was purchased on a whim after Lan’s mum, Gail, spotted an ad in the paper.
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