Review by New York Times Review
I COMPILED TWO lists while reading "The Trouble With Goats and Sheep": (1) British Sweets and (2) British Television Shows From 1976. For a nonnative the challenge comes in deciding where to classify certain names. Angel Delight? Garibaldis? Tiswas? The Sweeney? Sweet or TV program? Hard to say. Mysteries abound in Joanna Cannon's first novel; most are far more regretful and wicked than a package of biscuits. A reader wonders what ugly crimes these saccharine distractions are trying to cover up. Cannon's intense specificity captures a world in amber, permitting intimate access to the pantries, gardens and garages of Britain's past. She revisits a moment when 82 degrees signaled a heat wave. A very ordinary, short street is anything but when examined closely enough. Cannon's microcosm is rife with tiny extraordinaries. Arabesque bacteria flourish in this petri dish as the handful of residents and their twisted joint history cultivate large questions. Who's responsible for violence? Where does God live? What does it mean to appear/disappear? The story is set in two decades, in 1967 and 1976. While each timeline features a disappearance - a baby and a middle-aged woman both go missing - these not-quite-palindromic years are less mirror images, more cause and effect. Something sinister has happened, and while most denizens of the avenue would like to keep the secret festering under wraps, the 10-year-olds plucky Grace and frail Tilly are not going to let it be. Like the Situationists before them, these best friends function as local anthropologists. Their youth offers invisibility as they observe their neighbors with outsider eyes, erasing familiarity's blind spots. Their search for both the missing Mrs. Creasy and God turns up a staggering number of unsuspected hidden truths as well as a drainpipe apparition of Jesus. Or perhaps it is just a creosote stain. Cannon is a mapmaker; her stories create an atlas. Through Tilly and Grace's investigations, points are plotted. Chapters are addresses, and each home on the block has a moment to tell about its inhabitants: the alcoholic mother; the bereaved gardener; the mortified widow; the Indian family new to the narrowminded neighborhood; Grace's own perplexed parents; and Walter, the eccentric who collects suspicions wherever he goes. As in Georges Perec's "Life: A User's Manual," the secrets of each household come to light revealing a sticky web of guilt and this ugly truth: Neighborhoods comfort through segregation. Proximity becomes surveillance. To be seen is to be judged on this window-lined street, and Mrs. Creasy's sudden absenting of her life starts to make sense. Perhaps disappeared is the only true state of being. "'He said that Mrs. Creasy is officially a Missing Person.' "'Missing from what?' "Thinking made my feet slower. 'Her life, I suppose.' "'How can you be missing from your own life?' "I slowed a little more. 'Missing from the life you belong in.' "Tilly stopped to pull up her socks. 'I wonder how you know which one that is.'" Jesus' manifestation births a driveway vigil, a Chautauqua of folding chairs and a struggle. Who sits closest to Jesus? This caldron of neighbors grows hot. At what temperature will community boil over into mob violence? Fear is contagious in small spaces. Common-denominator fictions rule. Cannon's book is so timely. As Britain prepares to leave the European Union, we are faced with questions of classification. What belongs where? Who owns what? And what hollow treats will be developed to distract us from the real crimes committed in the name of safety? Permitting intimate access to the pantries, gardens and garages of Britain's past. SAMANTHA HUNT'S latest novel, "Mr. Splitfoot," was published in January.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [September 14, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* During the hot English summer of 1976, Margaret Creasy goes missing, bewildering her husband, John, and worrying her neighbors. Some said it was because of the heat, but 10-year-old Gracie Bennett, who lives two doors down from the Creasys' house, thinks otherwise. After talking to the local vicar, Gracie and her best friend, Tilly, go looking for God, to make sure everyone is safe and to bring Mrs. Creasy back. The girls visit the homes in their small, tight-knit community, including that of Walter Bishop, who's shunned as a pervert who once took a baby and is viewed suspiciously for taking photographs, presumably of children. As the narrative toggles between 1976 and 1967, when a fire at Bishop's house killed his aged mother, it becomes clear that every house on the avenue holds secrets. And Mrs. Creasy knew them all. In a masterfully constructed plot, Gracie who sniffs out the lies told by her adult neighbors learns a lesson about loyalty and true friendship, as secrets born of shame are gradually revealed. This understated, somewhat quirky debut novel is remarkable for its structure, characterizations, pitch-perfect prose, touches of humor, and humanity. Cannon, a psychiatrist, is an author to watch.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In her astute, engaging debut, Cannon uses the New Testament parable of the title (in which Jesus separates the good and evil on Judgment Day) to illustrate, wryly and with pinpoint accuracy, the righteous indignation and small-mindedness of a group of gossipy English suburbanites. The citizens ardently believe in their own goodness, and the evil of the man who lives at #11: Walter Bishop. It's 1976, during the hottest summer anyone can remember, when Margaret Creasy disappears. Most think Walter killed Margaret, but it's just as likely (or more) that someone else did; as everyone's confidante, Margaret knew about the secret punishments the citizens inflicted on Walter. Ten-year-old Grace takes a different approach, taking a local vicar at his word when he promises that if her neighbors find God, no one will be lost. She and her best friend, Tilly, will hunt for God-undercover-among their neighbors to find Margaret. Cannon, a psychiatrist, builds her narrative by slowly revealing backstories as the girls conduct their search, and the pieces of an entirely different sort of mystery than the one under investigation cleverly come together. This is an insightful, offbeat mystery. Agent: Sue Armstrong, Conville and Walsh Literary (U.K.). (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
In a small-town cul-de-sac in rural England, preteen Grace and her friend Tilly set out to find God. What they unknowingly uncover is an ugly neighborhood secret. Cannon's debut novel opens with the disappearance of the avenue's friendliest resident, Mrs. Creasey. Puzzled and worried, Grace approaches the church vicar, who responds with clichGod knows everyone's whereabouts. As Grace and Tilly search, Cannon's story is driven by the two girls intruding into an adult world, sometimes tentatively, sometimes brazenly. The novel is primarily set in the scorching summer of 1976, with flashbacks to events in 1967. The two threads merge to create an ominous, near-threatening aura, an oblique narrative haunted by things unsaid and shadowed references. Precocious Grace and fragile Tilly are well-nuanced protagonists, with a majority of chapters told from Grace's point of view. Cannon gives Grace a perceptive, insightful personality, as when she walks through a cemetery feeling "all the bones that were buried there had made wisdom grow in the soil" or when she and Tilly approach a schoolyard "where we dissolved into a spill of other children." Although dominated by Grace, Tilly is strong enough to be kinder and more empathetic. Adults scurry through the story, with blowsy Sheila Dakin forever sunning herself on her front lawn or the young widower Eric Lamb constantly nipping at a perfect garden or Walter Bishop resting uneasily at the heart of the secret. Ripe with symbolism and metaphorhypocrisy and rationalization reign when Tilly discovers Drainpipe Jesus, an apparitionCannon's sometimes-amorphous novel is a subjective sociological study with the air of a cozy mystery. A thoughtful tale of loyalty and friendship, family dynamics and human nature, and the cancer of buried truths. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
