Amy and Lan

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

Enchanting, funny and layered in pathos... Sadie Jones' unusual take on the rural dream is a gift of a book

Sarah Langford, author of IN YOUR DEFENCE

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

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

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

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*

Achingly poignant... This is a novel of quiet beauty, vividly evoking the magnitude of childhood loss and the capacity for hope

Stephanie Merritt, Observer

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

Xan Brooks, Guardian

A gentle but engaging read, Jones captures the beautiful simplicity and enduring hardships of farm life, painting a timely portrait of agriculture in a capitalist society... Beautifully written

Yorkshire Post

The novel unfolds over five years as a series of evocative vignettes, with a pulse of jeopardy in the pair's uneasy sense of adult tensions

Anthony Cummins, Irish Mail, 'The Best New Fiction'

A send-up of rural nostalgia and a comedy of manners combined with a thoughtful, genuine desire to understand the motives behind this 'better' way of life... By capturing specific moments in each season as the years pass, Jones beautifully conveys the sensual, almost bacchanalian glory of hay-making; the excitement of deep snow drifts in winter

Catherine Taylor, Financial Times

Compelling... [Jones] doesn't disappoint with this intermittently joyous but affecting portrait of childhood

i

A bright, bittersweet novel

Evening Standard, *Summer Reads of 2022*

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*

An enthralling, original novel: utterly convincing

Richard Mabey