Stephanie Jane recenzis The Smallest Thing de Lisa Manterfield
A brilliantly tense thriller
5 steloj
I visited the village of Eyam a couple of years ago spending time in the informative little museum there learning the story of how, when the great Plague of 1665 was inadvertently brought to their doors, this heroic community of 260 people chose to quarantine themselves in an attempt to save their neighbours in the surrounding villages and towns. Lisa Manterfield took that original tale and used it as inspiration for The Smallest Thing. This modern-day version bears some relation to the historic truth, but is also very much its own story and I loved reading it!
Manterfield understands the teenage small-town claustrophobic experienced by Emmott Syddall and I felt a lot of both sympathy and empathy for this character throughout the novel. The situation in which she ultimately finds herself is extreme, but always highly plausible - especially as I already knew Eyam had suffered like this before. The …
I visited the village of Eyam a couple of years ago spending time in the informative little museum there learning the story of how, when the great Plague of 1665 was inadvertently brought to their doors, this heroic community of 260 people chose to quarantine themselves in an attempt to save their neighbours in the surrounding villages and towns. Lisa Manterfield took that original tale and used it as inspiration for The Smallest Thing. This modern-day version bears some relation to the historic truth, but is also very much its own story and I loved reading it!
Manterfield understands the teenage small-town claustrophobic experienced by Emmott Syddall and I felt a lot of both sympathy and empathy for this character throughout the novel. The situation in which she ultimately finds herself is extreme, but always highly plausible - especially as I already knew Eyam had suffered like this before. The tense depiction of a village under siege is brilliant and I could easily imagine the fear and suspicion blooming as more people became sick. (If you're squeamish like me, rest assured that there aren't any gruesome symptom descriptions to contend with!) In fact Manterfield creates this atmosphere so well that I forgot I was reading a Young Adult novel. This book transcends that genre and I would happily recommend it to adult readers as well as teenagers.