The Farm at the Edge of the World
Sarah Vaughan
Loot.co.za (R330)
Hodder & Stoughton
REVIEW : JENNY STILL
This memorable novel is much more than a reliable book club buy.
Vaughan, the author of the best-selling The Art of Baking Blind, tackles the convoluted family history of Alice Coates, a nurse and grandmother with a secret. Her unexpected cancer diagnosis shocks her into setting things right in her current life and makes her decide to confront her past and the decision she was too young to make.
The farm in the title is Skylark Farm in northern Cornwall, a small dairy and holiday enterprise that should be in a landscape painting or a BBC television series. Quaint it may be, it is challenging to run.
Once galvanised into action, Alice makes a seemingly innocent booking to stay on the farm with the Petherick family for a fortnight. Young Judith, who runs the farm with her husband and mother Maggie, has no idea that the quiet guest in one of the self-catering cottages was once a frightened young girl sent there as an evacuee during the Second World War.
Then there is Lucy, Maggie’s daughter, a diligent neonatal ICU nurse who through a serious error that was averted by an observant colleague, can no longer face the tiny babies and all their tubes she used to feel so confident around.
The shift that ended her career started straight after her discovery of a long, blonde hair in her marital bed.
What a cliché – Matt, her charming ad executive husband has succumbed to a sparky colleague who laughed at his jokes at the office party, and brought her home.
Put on sick leave by the hospital, Lucy wanders around London, rudderless and in desperate need of her mother in Cornwall. She needs to smell the sea air and to mull over whether it is worth working on her marriage.
Following their stories is like gently peeling away layers of wallpaper in an old house.
Vaughan weaves a human story of intertwined histories and difficult decisions.
A life-affirming tale of the power of second chances, and love and kindness found in unexpected places.