Amy & LAN by Sadie Jones

Amy & LAN by Sadie Jones

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.

Sadie Jones is the daughter of a Jamaican writer and a London-born actress. She was born in London, England. Jones traveled for years, working as a waiter and teaching English as a second language before returning to London to pursue a career in filmmaking. She subsequently went on to work as a screenwriter, which she did for 15 years, writing for both BBC television and feature films. Her first novel, The Outcast, was published in 2008. She was a nominee for the Orange Prize and won the Costa First Novel Award for it.

Jones is married to Tim Boyd, an architect, and they have two children together. Jones writes of her desire to create The Outcast, It is commonly believed that everyone has a novel in them. I assumed I was an exception to this rule until I wrote The Outcast, which I felt obliged to write. I don't know; in many ways, it's a mystery to me. Perhaps I needed a book with enough life to it that screamed to be published, or perhaps I was simply learning the hard way how to make stories.