Amy & Lan: A Novel by Sadie Jones
What’s it About?
A 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.
Sadie Jones has written a beautiful, poignant novel from the alternating narration and points-of-view of the sensitive, keenly observant, titular children Amy and Lan (Harper Perennial). It was first published in hardback in Great Britain in 2022 and is now available in paperback. The story begins in 2005 with Lachlan Honey, called Lan, and Amy Connell who are 7-year-old best friends, born days apart to Gail and Harriet. Their mums have been like sisters since they met in primary school. Similarly, their children are virtually halves that form a whole; inseparable from birth.
They are the eldest of several children belonging to three pairs of adults who moved from Bristol to the Herefordshire countryside in 1998. This group of friends relocated in pursuit of a shared dream of living a quieter, simpler and more self-sufficient life away from “the dark and frightening world”. The often requested shared family origin story explains how the Connell, Honey and Hodges came to live on Frith Farm. It’s the only home the children have known and they wish to live there always. By age 12 when the book concludes, they realize change, although usually undesired is inevitable.
Here is the origin story as requested by Lan and Amy:
Gail had seen an advertisement offering what was once a traditional livestock farm for sale consisting of 78 acres, a farmhouse, barns and several outbuildings that could be renovated into housing. The ad did say the buildings needed modernization and renovation; an understatement.
Four generations of a family named Lacey had lived and worked the farm, now deteriorated to a ramshackle condition. Some machinery remained but the livestock was long gone. Gail desperately desired a change. She had married a man named Gray Parks while they were still in university and after seven years, as the two children stage-whispered her oft expressed statement, “it was not my right life”. Pregnant with Lan, she fled from London to Adam and Harriet’s Bristol flat. Coincidentally Harriet was pregnant with Amy.
The three adults lacked the funds to purchase the farm and turned to their other best chums, Rani and Martin Hodge. (The children refer to the five as “the home team”.) That very weekend, they traveled to tour the farm. It seemed rundown and sad but beautiful. They immediately named it “Firth”, the Old Norse word for sanctuary.
They bought the farm at auction after the Connell’s sold Adam’s flat, the Hodges sold their house and Gail got money from her ex. While they renovated, they lived at various time in the Farmhouse, a caravan and a tent and it rained all the while. Gail met Jim at a carpentry workshop where he was the instructor and he moved to the farm in time for Lan’s birth. Rani maintains a scrapbook containing the original ad in the frontispiece along with significant dates documenting the restoration projects as well as treasured family photographs.
READERS WILL BE FULLY IMMERSED IN THE WORLD
As the babies grew into toddlers, a septic tank was added, walls mended and the buildings gradually became habitable. The Honey and Connell families lived in the two wings of the Farmhouse and former Cowhouse with a great room in the middle containing a truly fabulous Rope Bridge which proved an irresistible jungle gym for the children. The Hodges lived in the former Carthouse. Harriet rescued her homeless painter friend Finbar to occupy a renovated and now insulated two story garden shed. Their friend Em appeared one day, shattered after her husband dumped her, to move into New Cottage.
The families grew as Adam and Harriet had Josh, then Jim and Gail had Eden and Bryn and Martin and Rani had Bill and Lulu. As the eldest, Amy and Lan took on the responsibility of keeping the little ones out of harm’s way. It was not so easy to keep Bill safe as he was an insufferable princeling of a deceitful brat and bully who could do no wrong in his parents’ eyes. Eventually, along with the children, cats and dogs, they added chickens, turkeys, goats, pigs and a bottle fed orphaned calf named Gabriella Christmas and grew a large garden.
It’s Eden for Amy and Lan with fields and woods to explore and creeks to wade; simple chores such as gathering eggs along with hours of woolgathering, wandering and wondering. They attend the village school, participate in Christmas pageants and holiday fetes. These best friends experienced the rare pleasures and heady excitement of a child surrounded by nature. The cycle of life and death is witnessed firsthand. They watched bees and butterflies and birds building and tending their nests and observed small mammals going about their day.
It was nearly unimaginable joy to be lost in imagination. Icy streams slaked their thirst while sandwiches from home and sun ripened berries satisfied their hunger. Their life on the farm was relatively unsupervised. The parents were woefully self-absorbed, pre-occupied with modernizing and fixing up the dilapidated old farm while also concerned about finances and consequently allowed their children to essentially run wild. The pre-school children play together closer to home.
The parents are not intentionally neglectful but these city dwellers had a steep learning curve to achieve self-sufficiency. Adam had been a jobbing actor, earning enough to buy his flat before meeting Harriet. Auditions for Bristol Rep and commercials dried up after the move. Martin retained his job and bemoaned his daily long commute to the city.
A BEAUTIFUL, POIGNANT NOVEL
Amy and Lan reminds the reader of the proverbial adage “little pitchers have big ears”. It cautions that children instinctively eavesdrop and observe adult speech and behavior. This saying first appeared in 16th century England in a 1546 glossary of proverbs assembled by author John Heywood. For these two, the five years in a dreamy sort of paradise pass quickly.
Lan is acutely, uncomfortably aware that he has never met his birth father and that reliable Jim is the parent to his younger siblings. He is interested in nature and has a growing interest in farming while Amy loves school, excelling in reading and writing. The adults struggle to maintain their dreams of sustainability as they come to terms that their middle class city upbringing left them ill-equipped for restoring a ruined farm to a state of productivity. Farm crafted items including candles, soaps and goat milk yogurt garner insufficient income.
The adults quarrel often and vociferously, about renting the outbuildings to tourists for “an authentic farm experience” and relationships are challenged by sexual tension, infidelity and jealousies. Amy, Lan and the younger children are helpless pawns in the adult drama as dreams evolve into something to be determined.
Sadie Jones is a talented, successful novelist who may have writing and storytelling in her DNA. Her late father Evan Jones who lived to be 95 wrote poetry, books, plays, television documentaries and was screenwriter for several successful films including Modesty Blaise and Funeral in Berlin (adapted from Len Deighton’s novel). Her mother Joanna Vogel was an actress and her sister Melissa is also a novelist. Amy and Lan demonstrates able mastery and understanding of the innermost thoughts of appealing, ordinary children. The leisurely pace may belie its power. Readers will be fully immersed in the world of Firth Farm.
About the author:
Sadie Jones is a novelist and screenwriter who was born and brought up in London. Her first novel, The Outcast (‘Riveting’, Lionel Shriver; ‘Devastatingly good’, Daily Mail) was the winner of the Costa First Novel Award. It was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize and was a Richard and Judy Summer Reads Number One bestseller.
Her second novel, Small Wars, (‘Outstanding’, The Times; ‘One of the best books about the English at war ever’, Joel Morris), was longlisted for the Orange Prize.
Her third, published in 2010, was The Uninvited Guests. (“…at once a shimmering comedy of manners and disturbing commentary on class… a brilliant novel.” Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder. ‘Delightful, eerie novel … puts one in mind of Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black …’ The Daily Telegraph.)
Her most recent is Fallout, which will be published in May 2014. Sadie is married to the architect, Tim Boyd, and they live in West London with their two children.
Publish Date: 8/16/2022
Author: Sadie Jones
Page Count: 320 pages
Publisher: Harper
ISBN: 9780063240902
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