Changes

I'm going to get my quibbles about this book out of the way before I go any further. I was pulled up sharp when I read that there were ''several very old men and women who were well into their ninetieth decade when they finally let go of life of life''. (Let me guess - it's the diet?) Then there was a silly typo a little further on and all the while I was looking at the black and white photos which intersperse the text and being regularly unable to work out what they were. Rather than reading confidently I was reduced to reading carefully - and it wasn't a pleasant sensation. After about fifty pages I put the book down and returned to start again a few days later.

She's equally good with people. It was on my second approach to the book that I really looked at the list of people in the story and this really helped me to sort out the relationships. The individual pen portraits of the people of the village are excellent but the combination of them all is far more than the sum of their parts. It builds into a picture of a way of life which is all but lost and an area of countryside which was once populated and is now quickly returning to nature.

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