The Year the Gypsies Came by Linzi Glass5/24/2023 ![]() ![]() A rape and a suicide round up a final chapter of disasters, described in prose that is both poetic and unsparing. Here, 12-year-old Emily, living in South Africa during the 1960s, watches her family disintegrate, unable to make her selfish and immature parents attend to the various warnings that come their way. Linzi Glass's The Year the Gypsies Came (Penguin, £10.99) adds to the post-colonial litany of unreal expectations, child neglect and failed marriages familiar from Doris Lessing's early stories or Alexandra Fuller's wonderful memoir Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight. Sexual jealousy and insensitive parents also come up as issues in this unusual and engrossing story. Working on an ingenious silent code devised between them, the two boys finally see off an evil baby-sitter fresh from Britain, but not before their friendship is tested to its limit. ![]() He is eventually saved by his friend Connor, the narrator of this story. It tells the story of a 13-year-old American boy who retreats into mutism after being unjustly accused of injuring his baby stepsister. Her latest novel, Silent to the Bone(Walker, £5.99), is another fine achievement. But this is not the way of EL Konigsburg, whose novels have twice won her America's Newbery medal. Writing for teenagers sometimes tempts authors into mimicking the immaturity of their readers. ![]()
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