Ruthless innocence
The Guardian Weekly|July 08, 2022
A heart-rending tragedy set in a dysfunctional rural commune captures the pure sugar-rush of the last days of childhood
Xan Brooks
Ruthless innocence

AMY Connell and Lachlan Honey are childhood soulmates on a Herefordshire smallholding, closer even than. siblings, born just a few days apart. They celebrate their birthdays every summer solstice with a ramshackle picnic on a nearby hill, surrounded by sweaty adults and grubby children. The grownups bring cake, red wine and homemade elderflower champagne. They also drag up a greased wheelie bin full of rats, which have been caught on the farm and need to be released in the wild. The rats squeak and scratch. They make the wheelie bin shake. "I bet they're eating each other," sniffs one of the kids "Or having sex."

Throw too many creatures together, one fears, and sooner or later they'll devour each other or start having sex. It's a harsh law of nature, as immutable as the seasons and as applicable to hippies on the Welsh borders as it is to rodents in a bin. Amy and Lan love living on Frith Farm, scything and baling and naming all the goats. But the idyll can't last - and that squeaking and scratching grows more persistent by the month.

この記事は The Guardian Weekly の July 08, 2022 版に掲載されています。

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この記事は The Guardian Weekly の July 08, 2022 版に掲載されています。

7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。

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