Helen Lewis trained as a graphic designer at The Faculty of Art, Southampton and worked in studios in London before setting up her own consultancy. She has been writing for ten years and has had short stories published in anthologies and national magazines. She lives in Pembrokeshire.
Evies eldest son Jesse is dead. At only sixteen he is gone, and his
younger brother and mother are in the depths of grief. A year has
passed since the terrible event and Evies husband, the high-flying
Andrew Wolfe, has decided that a move to the country is the answer
to his small familys seemingly unstoppable flow of grief. Breaking
the ties and strands of connection to Jesses childhood home pushes
Evies fragile state of mind to breaking point, but she has to
leave; she hasnt the strength to stand up to her husbands
determination.
Her surviving son Finn is suffering too; he has lost not only his
brother but the mother and father who are so immersed in grief and
in his fathers case in his career that they cannot focus on Finn.
His mother drifts in a cloud of despair and his father steams along
in a semi-impatient drive to pull his dependents out of their
anguish and back to some kind of normality. To this end he moves
his broken family to the rural depths of west Wales, down a rutted
lane to an ancient house slumbering in a bower of dripping,
overhanging greenery. But what Andrew Wolfe doesnt realise is that
his wife and son are haunted by the dead and that the place he has
brought them to has ghosts of its own.
Helen Lewis alternates between the viewpoints of Evie and
ten-year-old Finn. Evies deepening distress and torment are
balanced by Finns pragmatism and healthy self-absorption. He feels
the pain and loss but he can lose himself in the joy of a new and
exciting house to explore and of having a horse of his own a gift
smacking somewhat of bribery from his father, who needs to persuade
this sociable boy that living in rural isolation far away from his
friends is really a good idea.
But for Evie this move has nothing to ameliorate it. The enfolding
lush greenery of a Welsh valley isolates her in a world of
ever-greater uncertainty, where time seems to fold in on itself and
the inhabitants of the past offer more comfort than those of the
present.
Helen Lewis writes with sensitivity and a deep understanding of the
horrors and torments of grief and the struggle of the human mind to
accept the unacceptable. For a mother to lose a child is the
undoing of everything we take for granted in how things should be,
and Evies already had a tough life.
As Evie doubts whether Andrew is truly benign in his dealings with
her, and as his disapproving parents descend on her, every
protestation she makes becomes another mark against her and another
proof of her failing grip on sanity. Others can behave with a
vicious animosity, but unless Evie can rise above the provocations
of her in-laws her position is ever more precarious.
Lucy Walter
It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the
following acknowledgment should be included: A review from
www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.
Gellir defnyddio'r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi
gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar
www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.
*Welsh Books Council*
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