Jane Feaver

This debut work is quite remarkable. The story takes place in 1979 in the remote Northumbrian countryside of England where four children witness the imploding and painful unraveling of their parent's marriage.

At times slow and steady, it is an insightful journey of 15 year old Ruth who desperately tries to make sense of her parents, her emotions toward her siblings, and Robert, a local farmers son who holds an attraction in her dismal and sad life.

Woven with Ruth's story is the overlapping show more tale of Robert and his family who recently lost a beloved son.

The author excellently captures the feelings of young Ruth who floats like a leaf on a rapid current while trying to find a soft landing on shore.

The remote countryside serves as an excellent setting for the bickering of the parents, the squabbling of the siblings, and the keen sense of loss as tightly knit families become unwound.

Recommended show less

The Ruth of the title is a fifteen-year old girl, spending the long summer in the late 70s as always with her parents and three younger siblings in a run-down cottage high up in the hills above Hexham, Northumberland. Except that this summer is not quite as previous ones have been. Her parents' marriage is reaching breaking point, and the effects of other tragedies, recent and ancient, make themselves felt when tentative relationships are built with a neighbouring farming family.

The main show more narrative voice is Ruth's - her story is told in the first person, beautifully capturing the pre-occupations and perceptions of a teenaged girl who bears the responsibility of being the eldest, who is struggling with all the usual longings, excitements, pains, fears and embarrassments of growing towards adulthood, while also trying to understand and cope with the fragmentation of her parent's marriage and the consequent threat to her familiar world. Other perspectives are briefly told too - her mother, the neighbouring farmer and his wife - but these are third-person narratives - we are not fully inside their heads as we are Ruth's. And Ruth, though she shows signs of immaturity and self-absorption which are not surprising in a teenager, also has sufficient empathy and imagination to reach beyond herself, picking up and reacting to some of the currents of grief and loss in others which are swirling around that summer.

She writes: "It is the hardest thing I've had to learn, losing things; so hard to stop the business of looking, of acquiring at all costs, to make good the loss."

I found much here that resonated, in emotional impact if not in narrative detail, with my own experiences. I appreciated the subtle, funny and beautiful way Feaver writes about love and loss. And as teenaged narrators go, give me Ruth any day over Holden Caulfield!

Highly recommended. show less

An excellent book. The last stages of a marriage as seen by a number of people, but mostly by the oldest daughter, Ruth.

Feaver has captured the situation and the different perspectives in a very realistic way which gave this reader new insights into what happens in this type of circumstance.

I see that Feaver has a new book due out in a few months time. I'll be very interested to read it!