Amy and Lan: The enchanting new novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Outcast

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How did the good life go so wrong A child's-eye view of family and rural life in the compelling new novel from the no.1 bestselling author, Sadie Jones. HOW DID THE GOOD LIFE GO SO WRONG Amy Connell and Lan Honey are having the best childhood. When their families make the leap from city living to a farm in the West Country they have untold freedom. The adults are far too busy to keep an eye on them, and Amy and Lan would never tell them about climbing on the high barn roof, or what happened with the axe that time, any more than their parents would tell them the things they get up to. Adult things, like betrayal, that threaten to bring the whole fragile idyll tumbling down... 'Funny and moving' Elizabeth Day 'A fabulous thing- vivid and funny, sometimes heart-rendingly sad' Guardian 'I couldn't put it down' Esther Freud

Reviews

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*
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 *
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
Achingly poignant... This is a novel of quiet beauty, vividly evoking the magnitude of childhood loss and the capacity for hope -- Stephanie Merritt * Observer *
A bright, bittersweet novel * Evening Standard, *Summer Reads of 2022* *

Author Bio

Sadie Jones is a novelist and screenwriter. Her first novel, The Outcast, won the Costa First Novel Award in 2008 and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. It was also a Richard and Judy Summer Reads number one bestseller and adapted for BBC Television. Her second novel, Small Wars, was published in 2009, and longlisted for the Orange Prize. Her third, in 2012, was The Uninvited Guests, followed by Fallout in 2014 andThe Snakes in 2019, all published to critical acclaim.