It took me sometime to get into the flow of reading this book, perhaps the build-up of the story line was a bit slow for me! But the last third of it, the move/ the parting was quite gripping and made me emotional. How did the Simple Life get so complicated? A child's-eye view of family and rural life in the compelling new novel from Sadie Jones. Amy Connell and Lan Honey are having the best childhood, growing up on a West Country farm - three families, a couple of lodgers, goats, dogs and an orphaned calf called Gabriella Christmas. The main characters were stereo typed with a token Asian woman and young man with mental health issues. Visitors from the city were uniformly ignorant, condescending and shallow.I did not engage with any of the people described in the book and found it hard to picture them except in very general terms. Adam, in my opinion,was the only one who was not one dimensional.

You may change or cancel your subscription or trial at any time online. Simply log into Settings & Account and select "Cancel" on the right-hand side. The adults are far too busy to keep an eye on Amy and Lan, and Amy and Lan would never tell them about climbing on the high barn roof, or what happened with the axe that time, any more than their parents would tell them the things they get up to - adult things, like betrayal - that threaten to bring the whole fragile idyll tumbling down... I absolutely adored this book, I loved that it was told from a child’s perspective, really gave it an edge. It just goes to show that children are more astute than we give them credit for. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month.

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Themes of growing up and losing the innocence of childhood are woven into the story, along with the difficulties of friendships. The effects of adult relationships on children beg the question of who really are the adults here. Jones's evocation of childhood is spot-on- its fierce passions, disaffections, loyalties and suffering' Financial Times Amy and Lan live on a communal farm in Herefordshire, their parents having taken a leap in the dark just before they were born. They came into the world and Frith, the farm, just days apart. So, they are kind of twins, but not brother and sister. The story is told by them alternately from 2005 when they turn 7 to the cusp of adolescence. So not [quite]a coming-of-age. Some of the recollections highlighted how wild and dangerous childhood can be, especially without the supervision of adults. The chapters alternate between Lan’s voice and Amy’s. It takes a bit of getting used to. Working out who belongs to each child and who the others were took me a long time. They are definitely childish voices, with childish interests. We get clues to what are the issues with the adults through their childish observations, which they patently do not understand. Lan says that Amy never thinks that her mum ’might just go off one day’, which is a hint at what his mum has already done and so might do again. He catches his mum and Amy’s Dad kissing and ‘it wasn’t a love kiss because they aren’t married’. He dismisses it because he does not understand.

A gently episodic and humorous tale whose sharp-eyed, effervescent child narrators entertain... Beguilingly readable' Daily Mail Amy Connell and Lan Honey are having the best childhood. When their families make the leap from city living to a farm in the West Country they have untold freedom. The adults are far too busy to keep an eye on them, and Amy and Lan would never tell them about climbing on the high barn roof, or what happened with the axe that time, any more than their parents would tell them the things they get up to. Adult things, like betrayal, that threaten to bring the whole fragile idyll tumbling down... Gifted by Vintage and the Reading Agency* Amy and Lan is both an amusing and tragic presentation of rural life in the mid-late 2000s. Its two principal characters, Amy and Lan, provide a strong narrative voice for the plot. The story of Frith and the families that reside is told through the childish eyes of its two leads; trying to comprehend and navigate the complex dramas of the adults on the farm.

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I was irritated by many of the adults who were so engrossed in their own lives that the children ran wild in dirty clothes and missing school. The descriptions of the land,weather and farming tasks were vivid and well written.I had to skip over the many passages describing the inevitable sad endings for many of I loved exploring childhood with Amy and Lan; finding out what interested them. Lan’s list of the best things ever was super- they were all things we would agree with, but forget in the hustle and bustle of adult life, like ‘rain on lettuces because they look like glass’ and ‘watching caterpillars chew.’ When they decided to spit toothpaste water on Em, it really made me laugh. As a child, it would be one of those thoughts that you couldn’t get out of your head once thought and so tempting. Lan says the there isn’t any ending to the story of Frith because it’s the story of how they came to Frith- ‘ and we’re never ever ever leaving’- a child’s belief that things will always be the same. Sadie Jones has really captured the mind of the child, free of preoccupations with money and jobs and focussing on relationships.

Initially I found it quite difficult to follow and without any direction, one chapter being written as ‘Lan’ , the next as ‘Amy’, which made it a bit more difficult to follow which parents/family belonged to which child, but it’s worth persevering with. It is through their eyes that we learn about life on the commune. Not just the daily tasks but the personal tensions. Amy and Lan occupy a privileged zone: those younger than them are the “little kids”, their elders “the grown-ups”. They observe both, often literally from a perch high on the barn roof. They are not naïve and do notice things. They do not look through a glass darkly but make astute and shared assessments of their parents and other adults.I am not sure that Amy and Lan have distinctive voices, but perhaps they just wouldn’t. Nor is there an obvious development in their world view until they move to secondary school – but again maybe there wouldn’t be. It is not to be read as a comment on the viability of communal living – there being at least as much good as bad in Frith. Good and bad in all things and everyone. This is one of my favourite books this year. I loved the story of these two children and their families living on a farm. I was caught up in the lives of them all and enjoyed the self sufficiency of the farm. I felt like I knew these people and the ending made me feel emotional. I finished ‘Amy and Lan’ wanting to know how they adapted/enjoyed/survived the next ten years of their lives. Will there be a sequel?