Land Of Decoration
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Ten-year-old Judith McPherson is a believer. Her world is carefully constructed around her faith: nightly scripture reading with her father, weekly gatherings at the Meeting Hall and daily proselytizing to the lost. With no TV and no books “of the world” to entertain her, she passes time by creating The Land of Decoration, a model in miniature of The Promised Land which she has made of collected discarded scraps—divine treasures that she squirrels away.
But Judith’s troubles are mounting. At school, Neil Lewis’s relentless terrorizing has reached a feverish, dangerous pitch and, in town, a strike threatens the factory where her father works. One Sunday night, terrified of the violence that awaits her in the halls on Monday, Judith conjures a snowstorm in The Land of Decoration made of shaving cream, cotton and cellophane. The next morning the ground outside her window is a crisp, dazzling white. Judith can perform miracles. In fact, she might just be God’s chosen instrument. But with power comes weighty consequences, and Judith must face them head on to keep her faith—and her family—alive.
With its intensely taut storytelling and gorgeous prose, The Land of Decoration is a harrowing story of good and evil, belonging and isolation, faith and doubt, and it introduces us to a classic new heroine. It’s a novel that gives us many incredible gifts, but its most exciting is the gift of Grace McCleen, a brilliant, heartbreaking new voice in fiction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British musician McCleen's debut explores the complexities of love between a widowed father and his daughter. In her bedroom, 10-year-old Judith McPherson has recreated in miniatures the world she and other believers like her will go to after Armageddon called the Land of Decoration (named after the biblical Promised Land), there are cookie-carton houses and a sun made of bead-strung wires. Judith is vocal about her beliefs at school; as a result, she incurs the wrath of class bully Neil Lewis. Struggling under the pressures of Neil's cruelties and an increasingly distant father, Judith decides to try her hand at miracles. According to Judith, miracles are "what you see when you stop thinking, and they happen because someone made them." Small wonders start to occur she makes it snow, and she brings a lost cat home, but her newly acquired powers take a toll. Like many child narrators, Judith is precocious, and McCleen prudently avoids cutesiness, choosing instead to concentrate on Judith's creativity. McCleen was raised in a fundamentalist religion, allowing her to write of a potentially sensational subject with nuance and sensitivity. McCleen adroitly combines cinematic momentum with intuitive description in this novel about the consequences of faith and what happens when we believe that we have the power to effectuate change.
