Reviewed on Richard and Judy on 6th July 2005 and voted most enjoyable book by viewers. This was, in my mind, the surprise winner of the Whitbread First Novel award. I had got my money on Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, but this is certainly a very worthy winner. Written in two parts, the first an eight-year old grieving the loss of her mother as she is packed off to Wales and the second, reflecting. As she awaits the birth of her first child, she relives that agony and the sad mystery that followed it.
With the death of a mother and the abduction of a young girl, Susan Fletcher has written a vividly beautiful novel about the innocence and terror of childhood.Following the loss of her mother, eight-year-old Evie is sent to a new life in rural Wales - a dripping place, where flowers appear mysteriously on doorsteps and people look at her twice. With a sense of being lied to she sets out to discover her family's dark secret - unaware that there is yet more darkness to come with the sinister disappearance of local girl Rosemary Hughes.Now many years later Eve Green is waiting for the birth of her own child, and when she revisits her past something clicks in her mind and her own reckless role in the hunt for Rosie's abductor is revealed...A truly beautiful and hypnotic first novel, this is both an engaging puzzle and an enchanting work of literature.
