Amy & Lan
A Novel
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The author of the highly acclaimed, bestselling novel The Uninvited Guests returns with a captivating coming of age story told by Amy and Lan, two children whose journey from innocence to moving experience is shaped by their families' attempt at the pastoral dream on a farm, deep in the English countryside.
“The very first thing I remember is standing on the water-butt in the garden, with my Mum holding me to stop me falling, singing 'I'm On Top of the World' , and the smell of the new wood in the hot sun. And something do with Mum's silver necklace. Amy doesn't remember any of that. Her very first memory is our wolfhound Ivan knocking her over in a puddle. Or it might be eating a boiled egg, and looking at the daisies on her kitchen tablecloth.”
Amy Connell and Lan Honey are having the best childhood ever. They live on a 78-acre farm in the South West of England, with sisters and brothers, other kids, chickens, goats, three dogs, and even a calf, called Gabriella Christmas.
“Honeys in the Farmhouse, Connells in the Cowhouse, Hodges in the Carthouse . . .”
The three sets of parents are best friends who came to Frith from the city, and are learning, year after year, how to farm the land.
Free and unsupervised, Amy and Lan play with axes and climb on haystacks, but there is grownup danger at Frith they don't see. It's Gail, Lan's mother, and Adam, Amy's father who should be more careful. They should learn what kids know: never to play with fire.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jones (The Outcast) offers a delightful story of life on an English farm co-op from the perspective of two children. Frith, the farm's name, is a sanctuary from city life for three families, the Honeys, Connells, and Hodges, plus a divorcée named Em and Finbar, who is bipolar. At seven, in 2005, friends Amy Connell and Lan Honey deal with the dilemma of eating Virginia, the turkey that had been raised for Christmas dinner. Amy's failed-actor father, Adam, emboldened by the growing popularity of his blog, Exit, Pursued by a Goat, starts pushing to open a bed and breakfast, despite resistance from the others. By 2008, Adam gets support from Lan's witchy mother, Gail, for the B&B venture. Gail shares with Adam an aversion to the dirty farm work, such as butchering the animals—Gail would rather focus on making potions for various ailments—thus heralding an end to the others' heretofore tranquility. An extramarital affair adds more tension to the farm, but in the eyes of the children, everything will turn out okay ("Dangerous things are always fine if you're clever like we are, and cool like us," narrates Lan). Jones does a solid job showing how Amy and Lan, despite their naivety, perceive the truth of the adults' conflicts. This is great fun.
