Ireland, 1846 Nell is working as a scullery maid in the kitchen of the Big House. Once she loved school and books and dreaming. But there's not much choice of work when the land grows food that rots in the earth. Now she is scrubbing, peeling, washing, sweeping for Sir Philip Wicken, the man who owns her home, her family's land, their crops, everything. His dogs are always well fed, even as famine sets in.
Upstairs in the Big House, where Nell is forbidden to enter, is Johnny Browning, newly arrived from England: the young nephew who will one day inherit it all. And as hunger and disease run rampant all around them, a spark of life and hope catches light when Nell and Johnny find each other.
This is a love story, and the story of a people being torn apart. This is a powerful and unforgettable novel from the phenomenally talented Sarah Crossan.
Irish people know the Famine. We can give you the numbers, the general timeline. But sadly, in a lot of cases, that's all it is; numbers on a timeline. We don't feel the heartbreak and terror of it. That's where novels like this one come in.
Sarah has never shied away from controversial topics, and her free-poetry style draws readers in. The novel covers a couple of years, the most serious years of the famine, and the horror, the sadness and, maybe worst of all, the resignation of it all is clear and obvious here. The ending has a nice, not exactly twist I didn't see coming.
This is a couple of years older than the classic famine text, Under the Hawthorn Tree, but it very much deserves to stand alongside it in homes and classrooms. Stunning.
Where the Heart Should Be publishes on the 14th of March, 2024. I received a free copy and am giving an honest review.
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