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Amy and Lan

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

'This is the story of how we came to Frith. And we're never, ever, ever leaving.'

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 parents are best friends too. Originally from the city, they're learning about farming: growing their own vegetables, milking the goats, slaughtering chickens and scything the hay -

'Mind your eyes! Don't break your neck! Careful!'

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.

© Sadie Jones 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critics Review

I adore Sadie Jones' writing... [Amy and Lan is] funny, moving, and really goes to the heart of why trying to change for the better isn't as simple as it sounds
Elizabeth Day, *Day's Delights*
Jones's fictional landscape is jam-packed, abundant, and her smallholding as thick with intrigue as the Borgias' court... I don't think I've read another recent novel that better captures the pure sugar-rush of childhood; the sense of a life so exhilarating and ecstatic that it is almost too much to bear
Guardian
I couldn't put it down. Amy and Lan is a love letter to nature, to the seasons, to the ideal of simple living with all its human complications. It's a beautifully evoked story, full of empathy and hope
Esther Freud, author of I COULDN'T LOVE YOU MORE
Achingly poignant... This is a novel of quiet beauty, vividly evoking the magnitude of childhood loss and the capacity for hope
Observer
A bright, bittersweet novel
Evening Standard, *Summer Reads of 2022*
I loved Amy and Lan: the way parents mess up their children's lives is heartbreaking yet beautifully conveyed. I've long been a Sadie Jones fan but this may be her best yet. Poignant, compelling and brilliant
Mary Lawson, author of A TOWN CALLED SOLACE
Alive with the wonders of seasonal changes and the thrum of farm life, Amy and Lan will make you cry. Complex, beautifully written and true. I loved this book
Monique Roffey, author of THE MERMAID OF BLACK CONCH
Compelling... [Jones] doesn't disappoint with this intermittently joyous but affecting portrait of childhood
i
Jones brilliantly ventriloquises Amy and her best friend Lan... She conveys their passionate attachment to the freedom of their unconventional upbringing and deep connection to nature
Guardian, *Summer Reads of 2022*
Sadie Jones is a consummate novelist of the modern family, in all its mess, cruelties, loyalties, treacheries and tragedies. This child's eye perspective on the 21st century attempt at the Good Life is topical, comical and horrifying. I read it heart in mouth
Amanda Craig, author of THE GOLDEN RULE
Author Sadie Jones
Narrator Jaye Jacobs, Joe Jameson
Duration 8 hours and 46 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781529199840
Format Audiobook
Publisher Random House
Genre Family life fiction, Farm and working animals: general interest, Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Sense of place, Rural communities, The countryside, country life: general interest
Availability AU, GB, IE

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