Amy and Lan

'Fabulous: vivid and funny, sometimes heart-rendingly sad' GuardianThis is the story of how we came to Frith. And we're never, ever, ever leaving.'Amy Connell and Lan Honey are having the best childhood, growing up on a West Country farm - three families, a couple of lodgers, goats, dogs and an orphaned calf called Gabriella Christmas.The parents are best friends too. Originally from the city, they're learning about farming: growing their own vegetables, milking the goats, slaughtering chickens and scything the hay--'Mind your eyes! Don't break your neck! Careful!'The adults are far too busy to keep an eye on Amy and Lan, 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...'A gently episodic and humorous tale whose sharp-eyed, effervescent child narrators entertain... Beguilingly readable' Daily Mail'Jones's evocation of childhood is spot-on: its fierce passions, disaffections, loyalties and suffering' Financial Times

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

Sadie Jones is the critically acclaimed author of six novels. Her first, The Outcast, won the Costa First Novel Award, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and was a Richard and Judy Number One bestseller. Her second, Small Wars, 2009, was longlisted for the Orange Prize. The Uninvited Guests, was published in 2010. Also a screenwriter, Sadie adapted The Outcast for BBC Television in 2014, directed by Iain Softley and starring George Mackay. Her fourth novel, Fallout, came out the same year, and her fifth, The Snakes in 2019. Her sixth novel, Amy and Lan, was published in July 2022.Sadie is the daughter of the Jamaican screenwriter, novelist and poet, Evan Jones, and British actress, Joanna Jones. She was born and brought up in London, and is married to the architect, Tim Boyd.