Another insightful and compassionate free verse novel from the queen of this increasingly admired form, this time exploring the transformative relationship between an abused runaway teenager and an elderly lady with dementia.
Allison has grown up “stepping on eggshells” to circumvent her father’s violence. While she often wonders whether his behaviour was “all my fault”, one of his outbursts compels her to run away. With nowhere to go, she finds sanctuary in the house of an elderly woman called Marla. Marla has dementia and thinks Allison is Toffee, her best friend from childhood. After spending some time in Marla’s company, Allison decides to “stop correcting her… I like the idea of being sweet and hard, a girl with a name for people to chew on.” Moreover, in meeting Marla, Allison has found an unlikely kindred spirit: “I am not who I say I am. Marla isn’t who she thinks she is… Here, in this house, I am so much happier than I have ever been”.
Returning the favour, Allison enriches Marla’s life – she listens, she indulges Marla’s desire to dance - while Marla’s carer and son show no real regard for her happiness, as if she’s beyond life, which makes Allison’s attentiveness all the more heart warming. Both vulnerable, they find strength through each other. With incredibly moving insight, Marla says of Allison’s dad, “none of it was about you. It was about him. It’s always about him. Surely you know that.”
The writing is compellingly fluid, flowing freely between Allison’s precarious present and the tragic, abusive circumstances that sent her careering down this path. While fleeting, the impact of their time together is monumental, and I felt privileged to have spent time in their company.
I am not who I say I am, and Marla isn't who she thinks she is. I am a girl trying to forget. She is a woman trying to remember.
Allison has run away from home and with nowhere to live finds herself hiding out in the shed of what she thinks is an abandoned house. But the house isn't empty. An elderly woman named Marla, with dementia, lives there - and she mistakes Allison for an old friend from her past called Toffee. Allison is used to hiding who she really is, and trying to be what other people want her to be. And so, Toffee is who she becomes. After all, it means she has a place to stay. There are worse places she could be. But as their bond grows, and Allison discovers how much Marla needs a real friend, she begins to ask herself - where is home? What is a family? And most importantly, who am I, really?
A moving and powerful novel from one of our most original writers. John Boyne
Praise for Moonrise;
Any reader with a heart will weep buckets - The Sunday Times
A moving account of sibling relationships, poverty and powerlessness - Irish Times
Moonrise tells a story of human cost and exposes the injustice and discrimination that so often lies at the heart of the death penalty. Readers can't help but reflect on deep values of truth, freedom, equality and justice. A gripping, powerful and exceptionally moving story - Amnesty International
Praise for One;
Truly remarkable - Irish Times
Imagined with empathy, it will shake up preconceptions and move readers to tears - Sunday Times Book of the Week
Author
About Sarah Crossan
Sarah Crossan has lived in Dublin, London and New York, and now lives in East Sussex. She graduated with a degree in Philosophy and Literature before training as an English and drama teacher at the University of Cambridge. The Weight of Water and Apple and Rain were both shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal. In 2016, Sarah won the CILIP Carnegie Medal as well as the YA Book Prize, the CBI Book of the Year award and the CLiPPA Poetry Award for her novel, One.
Sarah is the go-to writer of the free verse novel in the UK and Ireland, and is the current Laureate na nÓg (Ireland’s Children’s Literature Laureate). Her theme as Laureate is #WeAreThePoets, a two-year project inspiring young people to express themselves through poetry and verse.
