The Smart family are on an extended summer holiday in Norfolk. Twelve-year-old Astrid is not impressed, everything about the cottage and its locality is, in her words, substandard. The views of her seventeen-year-old brother, Magnus, are not known; he is not speaking to anyone and has mainly withdrawn into his bedroom. Mother, Eve, spends all day in the summer house struggling with her writer’s block. And stepfather Michael, his academic career mired in gross moral turpitude, is concerned with his latest trade of grades for sex.
Into this dysfunctional menage comes, uninvited, Amber MacDonald. She falls between the Smart generations, charming them all despite her penchant for saying it how it is. Eve assumes she is one of Michael’s ‘special’ students; Michael assumes she is one of Eve’s fans. By the time they realise their mistakes, the cuckoo is well established in the nest.
Astrid sees a role model; Magnus has a reason to come out of his funk; Michael senses a possible new conquest; and Eve sees a lost soul to save. They are all wrong, but Amber’s intervention changes the family dynamic; for better or worse is a moot point.
The structure is unconventional with each of the family taking a turn to be centre stage in the narrative, their four streams of consciousness flowing in distinctive styles, appropriate to the character. Their secrets are revealed to the reader. With Amber as catalyst, will they be spilled to the rest of the family?
The unusual
structure and the idiosyncratic characters, not least Amber, make for an
interesting and entertaining read.
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