Pollard - Softcover

Beatty, Laura

3.76

212 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099516942 ISBN 13: 9780099516941

Publisher: Vintage, 2009

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To fifteen-year-old Anne the woods that lie beyond her house are a temporary refuge from her noisy, chaotic family, until one day she gathers her courage and steps into the woods, never to return. Slowly, she makes a new life for herself, learning to forage and to hunt, to build a house from the bounty of the woods and to listen to the voices of the trees. As she endures her first, terrible winter she develops the strength of character that will carry her through the dangers of her unconventional life and the bitter beauty of falling in love, but as the outside world encroaches on her secret existence Anne faces a terrible tragedy.

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Review:

"A fierce and wonderful book ... This is just the sort of generous, provocative novel the Booker judges should cherish...Bewitching... despite its readability, Pollard is the precise opposite of escapist literature, because it gives the reader back the world" (Observer)

"Beatty has a wonderful ear for voice, especially the voices of children, and the characters she constructs through Anne's skewed perception are funny and heartbreaking by turns; but what is really impressive is how she weaves her human comedy with the most powerful nature writing... This novel heralds an exceptional talent'" (Guardian)

"Enchanting...Beatty is a writer of extraordinary power...alive to every nuance of behaviour" (Literary Review)

"This is a moving novel, delicate yet powerful, whose unusual heroine charms absolutely" (Economist)

"Most contemporary depictions of homelessness tend to home in on the urban, gritty aspect, conveying inner-city squalor. Laura Beatty's lyrical, pastoral Pollard admirably takes a different tack... Beatty writes about endurance with compassion and empathy. She fantastically conveys the elemental quality of Anne's life and the ways in which her strangeness makes relationships with other human beings much more fraught than her dealings with the harsh, beautiful woodland world" (Metro)

Book Description:

Combining a remarkable understanding of the natural world with a gift for empathy, Pollard is an extraordinary first novel that marks the debut of an unforgettable writer.

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