Was an ok book. It was about grief and being open with your emotions. A young boy witnesses the death of his mother in a drowning accident, she was drunk and he was the only one there and he couldn’t save her. The father didn’t seem very in touch with his emotions so the young boy could never come to terms with what had happened. He goes off the rails at that point, starts cutting himself, running away and drinking. His father doesn’t know what to do with him and his step-mum is too young to help. Eventually it gets to the point where he vandalises the church and is sent to prison. When he returns he tries to be different but nothing has changed so he falls back into the same patterns. But this time there is a young girl who is being beaten by her father and together they manage to escape this village and live a different way

What an extraordinary book! Heartbreaking and yet uplifting too. The suffocating constraints of 1950s Britain are laid bare in forensic detail. I am old enough that much of what is revealed about mid 20th century life resonates painfully. This is a really impressive feat of writing that lays bare the reasons for many of the problems we are now dealing with. And it’s a good, if uncomfortable, read too.

3.5 stars: I did enjoy the book; very painful aftermath of drowning of the main character's mother. I would have liked less plot and more insight into characters to make it 4 stars

Boring and awful.

I adore this book and recommend it to everybody and everyone. Some might have found it slow halfway through, but it kept me hooked throughout. The whole story is haunting and I feel for the main character more than I ever have for a protagonist before. I really do recommend this to people who are looking for a good book to read.

A desperately sad novel....when Lewis Aldridge returns home from serving a two-year sentence in prison, he must find a way back into his family and community. The book jumps from year to year, telling the reader the story of Lewis' tragic childhood when, as a ten year old, he witnesses the drowning of his treasured mother. Lewis' father has no idea of how to deal with his son and refuses to acknowledge his desperate pleas for help. Misunderstood by everyone, Lewis is completely alone, except for a friend, who emerges to be a soulmate of sorts. Extremely depressing, there is really no satisfaction for the reader until the last pages. That being said, Sadie Jones certainly provides fascinating dialogue of 1950s mid-to upper class British society.

Well written, easy to read, engaging. At about the half-way point it started to head in a more and more absurd direction, until it ended with a ridiculous conclusion.

I'd read - and loved - her book The Uninvited Guests, so decided to try this one. It’s written in a similar style, some long rambling sentences and detailed description--a bother for some fellow readers but not too slow for me. I enjoyed the journey as I read, and was also happy with the destination.

"I'm not sad," she said, crying.

This book seemed to plague 'Holiday Reads' stands in bookshops a couple of years ago, implying it is an easy read, which in many ways it is, it is not in an way an easy read to swallow. There is no sugarcoating in this narrative, there is no romanticising of heavy and sensitive subjects for the sake of being poetic, there is no space to breathe in this book; I am grateful to Sadie Jones for all of these things because one moment I was confined by her words, with no room to think and in the next, as pretentious and sappy as it sounds (cut me some slack, I just finished uni, I'm probably going to get a little sensational), my mind felt liberated.

Every page seems to be soaked through with the sense of isolation and exclusion; as a reader it is clear that all the characters are trapped in some way or another, but while I was wrapped up in this knowledge, I failed to notice myself become trapped in the narrative and mindsets that no "normal" person should be familiar with until it was too late and all I could do was read.

As well as weaving this clever and imprisoning web, Jones also effectively depicted the hypocrisy of previous generations' (and our own) obsession with keeping up appearances at all cost that are kept safe by the dividing practice of defining ourselves by what we are not. Lewis bore the brunt of being the Other, the Outsider, the Outcast, made him believe that he was wrong and alone in this, when in truth all the characters had wrongness in them, that the line between right and wrong is blurred and no one is 100% anything but human. If you can recognise this happening to a character, we should start recognising it happening to ourselves.

We are all trapped; we allow ourselves to be controlled by "the norm" and position ourselves on one side of the line or the other, reluctant to change in case it disrupts the familiar that keeps us safe. We are this or that. From there we are right or wrong, and of course from these dividing practices come social issues that shamefully still exist. But we can be this and that. We are both because we are human and to continue denying this will keep us frozen and unchanging, like the people of Waterford.

This will probably sound patronising, but I tell you now that is not what I intend: for those who saw some of the characters nonsensical or thought the lack of relief was unrealistic, I am happy for you. I understand it is not original in its messages, but I have not read a book that was so powerfully and honestly written. Yes, this book was bleak, suffocating and depressing but it was also bright and hopeful. Like I said at the end of my opening paragraph, as Jones's claustrophobic narrative started to ebb away, it was like breathing in fresh air.

I was angry at the characters, all of them, until the end. This book shows the ugly side of everyone but leaves room for hope.