An agreeable, often very funny novel about music and the difficulty of making sense of the rest of humanity when you are somewhere on the autism spectrum. I felt it was slightly spoilt by the way all the female characters (except the main viewpoint character, her mother and her mother-in-law) were competent, resourceful, tactful domestic angels and almost all the male characters were infantile monsters who seemed to exist only to sleep, have tantrums and be fed. Obviously not an unrealistic view of the world, but a somewhat monochrome one... ( )

Morrall is an excellent story teller. This book is narrated through the central character of Jessica Fontaine and her experiences of music, a disastrous marriage, a ‘strange’ son, growing up as a member of an eccentric family and feeling constantly out of place. The plot takes us on a journey into ‘normality’ and in the process Jessica changes from passivity to occupying and owning her space in life. ( )

A young girl who prefers to be alone, who lacks the social skills to have friends, who marries young and rapidly becomes a mother. This is the intense story of Jessica Fontaine who longs for the air in her house to be hers alone, who manages a difficult marriage and worries about how she is raising her son. This is a story of a lifetime of self-discover and self-acceptance. This description may make the book sound as if nothing happens but it does and, as in any Clare Morrall, subtlety is layered on subtlety.
Jessica grows up at Audlands, a country house which is decaying around the family. Her father was a successful chocolate manufacturer and the house a symbol of his success. As he grows older and the company fails, so does the house. Jessica and her sister Harriet grow up side-by-side, loving the house, the dirt and cobwebs, but not really knowing or understanding each other. Only when Jessica discovers the piano does she find freedom.
This is a novel about Asperger’s and the autism spectrum and one woman’s acceptance of her own emotional issues and how they impact and intertwine with the emotional issues of her unpredictable husband Andrew and quiet solitary child Joel. As she grows older, through music and with a supportive friend, Jessica learns the tools to make life easier. ‘Pretence gives you room to get around obstacles without touching them, the space to observe that there are other sides to people, not just the abrasive, challenging attitude that you can’t cope with. You have to view people from new angles, see where the light falls, discover which edges have been worn down and softened with time. Otherwise you get so caught up in the negatives you can’t see anything else.’
There is a lot of wisdom in this book, insights in how to behave – and not behave - within relationships, and how to be forgiving of others.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/ ( )

Another excellent book by Morrall. As usual, I find great empathy with her characters who are on the fringes of normal society - the misfits who just don't seem to be able to deal with the circumstances that life has thrust upon them and have developed coping mechanisms that are seen as deviant by mainstream society. In the case of this book the label "Asperger's" is applied by one of the characters to another....and a third subsequently labels themself in the same way. I don't know anything about Morrall's intent, but to me the label is largely irrelevant. There are lots of people whose behaviour puts them on the outer, and whether they're deviant enough to qualify for a formal psychiatric diagnosis is a question with doubtful value to me. Should we treat someone with 'deviant' behaviour differently because some medical specialist has placed them in a particular diagnostic box (which another specialist might disagree with anyway)? Hmmm...I must chase up an interview with Ms Morrall and see if she has offered some thoughts on this issue.
The only thing I didn't like about this book was the same as I find in all her work - that she seems to feel the need to finish the book on an optimistic not. But maybe Ms Morrall is an optimistic sort of person and that's just how she sees the world? ( )

Clare Morrall is one of the great and gripping literary authors of our time and I have absolutely no idea why more people don't read her. This book is rich in poetry and character development, and the unique main character is a real treasure. Family life has never seemed so foreign and yet so strangely necessary.

That said, the mystery of why Jessica is how she is turns out to be no great mystery at all as I'd understood it by the end of the first chapter - but the interest lies in the character herself and how she comes to terms with her life. Oh, and the dying country house she grows up in and never really leaves is utterly magnificent in every way.

I loved it. ( )