Sadie Jones – författare

Vacker skildring av barndom och brokiga familjer  

Amy och Lan är bästa vänner. Deras föräldrar har lämnat storstaden för ett liv på landet och tillsammans med en tredje familj lever de på gården Frith. Här lär de sig att odla grönsaker, mjölka getter och slakta kycklingar. Amy och Lan älskar sin frihet och djuren de får ta hand om, som den föräldralösa kalven Gabriella Christmas som bor i familjens kök.

De vuxna är alldeles för upptagna med sitt för att hålla ett öga på Amy och Lan, och barnen säger inget om hur de brukar klättra på det höga ladugårdstaket, eller om vad som hände med yxan den där gången På samma sätt som föräldrarna undviker att prata om konflikterna som hotar den ömtåliga idyllen. Drömmen om det enkla livet på landet visar sig nämligen vara mer komplicerad än de någonsin kunde ana.    

Sadie Jones har skrivit en skimrande barndomsskildring och tecknar ett kärleksfullt porträtt av människorna i ett dysfunktionellt litet paradis på jorden. Rolig, hemsk, sorglig och ljus på samma gång, en bok att svepas med av och älska. 

"Fantastisk ... Levande och rolig, ibland hjärtskärande sorglig" - The Guardian  

Sadie Jones är en engelsk roman- och manusförfattare. Hennes debutroman, Den utstötte, vann Costa First Novel Award 2008.

A mesmerizing portrait of 1950s hypocrisy and unexpected love, from a powerful new voice

It is 1957, and Lewis Aldridge, straight out of prison, is journeying back to his home in Waterford, a suburban town outside London. He is nineteen years old, and his return will have dramatic consequences not just for his family, but for the whole community.

A decade earlier, his father''s homecoming has a very different effect. The war is over and Gilbert has been demobilized. He reverts easily to suburban life—cocktails at six-thirty, church on Sundays—but his wife and young son resist the stuffy routine. Lewis and his mother escape to the woods for picnics, just as they did in wartime days. Nobody is surprised that Gilbert''s wife counters convention, but they are all shocked when, after one of their jaunts, Lewis comes back without her.

Not far away, Kit Carmichael keeps watch. She has always understood more than most, not least from what she is dealt by her own father''s hand. Lewis''s grief and burgeoning rage are all too plain, and Kit makes a private vow to help. But in her attempts to set them both free, she fails to foresee the painful and horrifying secrets that must first be forced into the open.

In this brilliant debut, Sadie Jones tells the story of a boy who refuses to accept the polite lies of a tightly knit community that rejects love in favor of appearances. Written with nail-biting suspense and cinematic pacing, The Outcast is an emotionally powerful evocation of postwar provincial English society and a remarkably uplifting testament to the redemptive powers of love and understanding.

“Sadie Jones has a long literary future ahead of her.” —Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl with the Pearl Earring

Fresh off her triumphantly assured debut novel The Outcast, award-winning author Sadie Jones has again delivered a quiet masterpiece in Small Wars. Set on the colonial, war-torn island of Cyprus in 1956, Jones tells the story of a young solider, Hal Treherne, and the effects of this “small war” on him, his wife Clara, and their family. Reminiscent of classic tales of love and war such as The English Patient and Atonement, Jones’s gripping novel also calls to mind the master works of Virginia Woolf and their portrayal of the quiet desperation of a marriage in crisis. Small Wars is at once a deeply emotional, meticulously researched work of historical fiction and a profound meditation on war-time atrocities committed both on and off the battlefield.

“The opening pages read like an episode of Downton Abbey…But Jones has something more uncanny in mind, and when the party is interrupted by survivors of a nearby train wreck, the comedy of manners turns downright surreal…Jones’s effervescent writing keeps the course steady-even as her characters shed their civilized veneers.” — Ellen Shapiro, People magazine (four star review)

A grand old manor house deep in the English countryside will open its doors to reveal the story of an unexpectedly dramatic day in the life of one eccentric, rather dysfunctional, and entirely unforgettable family. Set in the early years of the twentieth century, award-winning author Sadie Jones’s The Uninvited Guests is, in the words of Jacqueline Winspear, the New York Times bestselling author of the Maisie Dobbs mysteries A Lesson in Secrets and Elegy for Eddie, “a sinister tragi-comedy of errors, in which the dark underbelly of human nature is revealed in true Shakespearean fashion.”

A grand old manor house deep in the English countryside will open its doors to reveal the story of an unexpectedly dramatic day in the life of one eccentric, rather dysfunctional, and entirely unforgettable family.

Set in the early years of the twentieth century, award-winning author Sadie Jones’sThe Uninvited Guestsis, in the words of Jacqueline Winspear, theNew York Timesbestselling author of the Maisie Dobbs mysteriesA Lesson in SecretsandElegy for Eddie, “a sinister tragi-comedy of errors, in which the dark underbelly of human nature is revealed in true Shakespearean fashion.”

“The Snakes is many things—a parable and an ancient drama where a father’s greed devours his children, a police procedural, an avid take on tabloid venality, and a bitter comedy, superbly observed, where behind a woman’s eyes she is ‘all movement inside herself, like a wasp in a glass.’ I admit that I’m still shaken by parts of this novel. Sadie Jones writes with pitiless aplomb and corrosive intelligence.”—Louise Erdrich

A chilling page-turner and impossible to put down, THE SNAKES is Sadie Jones at her best: breathtakingly powerful, brilliantly incisive, and utterly devastating.

 The new novel by Sadie Jones tells the tense and violent story of the Adamsons, a dysfunctional English family, with exceptional wealth, whose darkest secrets come back to bite them. Set mostly in rural France during contemporary times, THE SNAKES is an all-consuming read and a devastating portrait of how money corrupts, and how chance can deal a deadly hand.

THE SNAKES exposes the damage wreaked by parents on children as observed by a new member of the family, Dan, a mixed-race man from Peckham who marries Bea, the daughter who refuses to take any of her father’s filthy money. But when Bea’s brother Alex (who runs a shabby hotel in Paligny, France) dies suddenly in unexplained circumstances, the confusion and suspicion which arise bring other dark family secrets—and violence—to the surface. And none of the family, even the good members, go untouched.

The author of the highly acclaimed, bestselling novel The Uninvited Guests returns with a captivating coming of age story told by Amy and Lan, two children whose journey from innocence to moving experience is shaped by their families'' attempt at the pastoral dream on a farm, deep in the English countryside.

“The very first thing I remember is standing on the water-butt in the garden, with my Mum holding me to stop me falling, singing ''I''m On Top of the World'' , and the smell of the new wood in the hot sun. And something do with Mum''s silver necklace. Amy doesn''t remember any of that. Her very first memory is our wolfhound Ivan knocking her over in a puddle. Or it might be eating a boiled egg, and looking at the daisies on her kitchen tablecloth.”

Amy Connell and Lan Honey are having the best childhood ever. They live on a 78-acre farm in the South West of England, with sisters and brothers, other kids, chickens, goats, three dogs, and even a calf, called Gabriella Christmas.

“Honeys in the Farmhouse, Connells in the Cowhouse, Hodges in the Carthouse . . .”

The three sets of parents are best friends who came to Frith from the city, and are learning, year after year, how to farm the land.

Free and unsupervised, Amy and Lan play with axes and climb on haystacks, but there is grownup danger at Frith they don''t see. It''s Gail, Lan''s mother, and Adam, Amy''s father who should be more careful. They should learn what kids know: never to play with fire.

One late spring evening in 1912, in the kitchens at Sterne, preparations begin for an elegant supper party in honour of Emerald Torrington''s twentieth birthday. But only a few miles away, a dreadful accident propels a crowd of mysterious and not altogether savoury survivors to seek shelter at the ramshackle manor - and the household is thrown into confusion and mischief.The cook toils over mock turtle soup and a chocolate cake covered with green sugar roses, which the hungry band of visitors are not invited to taste. But nothing, it seems, will go to plan. As the passengers wearily search for rest, the house undergoes a strange transformation. One of their number (who is most definitely not a gentleman) makes it his business to join the birthday revels.Evening turns to stormy night, and a most unpleasant game threatens to blow respectability to smithereens: Smudge Torrington, the wayward youngest daughter of the house, decides that this is the perfect moment for her Great Undertaking. The Uninvited Guests is the bewitching new novel from number one bestseller Sadie Jones. The prizewinning author of The Outcast triumphs in this frightening yet delicious drama of dark surprises - where social codes are uprooted and desire daringly trumps propriety - and all is alight with Edwardian wit and opulence.

Brought to you by Penguin.READ THE TENSE TWIST-FILLED RICHARD AND JUDY BOOK CLUB PICK FOR SPRING 2020 FROM THE #1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE OUTCAST‘Superbly written, each sentence punctuated by a drumbeat of menace ... A thrillingly good read’ Elizabeth DayFamily secrets can be deadly…Newly-weds Dan and Bea decide to escape London. Driving through France in their beaten-up car they anticipate a long lazy summer, worlds away from their ordinary lives.But their idyll cannot last. Stopping off to see Bea’s brother at his crumbling hotel, the trio are joined unexpectedly by Bea’s ultra-wealthy parents. Dan has never understood Bea’s deep discomfort around them but living together in such close proximity he begins to sense something is very wrong.Just as tensions reach breaking point, brutal tragedy strikes, exposing decades of secrets and silence that threaten to destroy them all.‘A twisty delight of a novel, a cracking page-turner that has much to say about modern life and our attempts to find a way to navigate it, no matter where we come from’ Cathy Rentzenbrink© Sadie Jones 2019 (P) Penguin Audio 2019

Brought to you by Penguin.''This 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.© Sadie Jones 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022