10.21.2021

finished reading

This book kind of snuck up on me.  It's lovely literary fiction.  The descriptions are vivid and exceptional.  And the story--well, it sucked me in.  It's the story of family, of family stories, of fitting in and not fitting in.  I didn't particularly like the characters but I was invested in what happened to them.  Even though the mother dies in the beginning (not a spoiler), she's a main character--her influence is on every page.

From the publisher:
What if the life you have always known is taken from you in an instant? What would you do to get it back?

Twins Jeanie and Julius have always been different from other people. At 51 years old, they still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation and poverty. Their rented cottage is simultaneously their armour against the world and their sanctuary. Inside its walls they make music, in its garden they grow (and sometimes kill) everything they need for sustenance.

But when Dot dies suddenly, threats to their livelihood start raining down. At risk of losing everything, Jeanie and her brother must fight to survive in an increasingly dangerous world as their mother's secrets unfold, putting everything they thought they knew about their lives at stake.

This is a thrilling novel of resilience and hope, of love and survival, that explores with dazzling emotional power how the truths closest to us are often hardest to see.



No comments: