Mary George of Allnorthover Book

Mary George of Allnorthover marks the novelistic debut of the successful poet Lavinia Greenlaw . In telling the story of Mary, a 17-year-old from a small East Anglian village, Greenlaw's beautiful and often funny poetic observation becomes apparent quickly. When Mary wakes up after one of her first late night parties, she views "where the shaggy carpet had been scorched, its nylon thread was gluey and fused". Although set in the summer of the petrol crisis in the late seventies, the tale often has the tone of a much older period, as though the village belongs to ancient myth: "Crouchness sat on the point of the estuary where clay gave way to mud." The sea air is of the kind you'd rather not breathe, and the town is "a blur of grey, like a model waiting to be painted". The fetid smell provides the perfect metaphor for the secrets buried underwater in the village reservoir, which Mary finds herself being lured towards, until she encounters the obsessive and unstable Tom Hepple, who has just returned to Allnorthover after years in a psychiatric hostel. Both Tom and Mary have the inability to see things as they are, Mary through shortsightedness and naivety and Tom through mental illness. In a provincial setting where people rely on the routine of the Parish Council, fetes, jumble sales and scout discos, Tom is tolerated though he is unhinged, while Mary seeks sweet marijuana release with her mate, Billy, until she can move to London. In the confusing process of growing up, Mary has to choose between the snobs and the yokels, and between her divorced parents' version of events from her childhood. In her willingness to help Tom uncover the source of his trauma, she triggers family disclosures and a bigger tragedy for Allnorthover. This novel grasps cloying small-town life and adolescent self-consciousness so accurately that it makes you squirm with claustrophobic pity for Mary. --Cherry SmythRead More