Landed
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Brought up in the Anglo–Welsh borders by an affectionate but alcoholic and feckless mother, Owen Ithell's sense of self is rooted in his long, vivid visits to his grandparents' small farm in the hills. There he is deeply impressed by his grandfather's primitive, cruel relationship with his animals and the land.
As an adult he moves away from the country of his childhood to an English city where he builds a new life, working as a gardener. He meets Mel, they have children. He believes he has found happiness—and love—of a sort.
But following a car accident, in which his daughter is killed and he loses a hand, the course of his life and the lives of those he loves is changed forever. Owen, unable to work, alienated and eventually legally separated from his family, is haunted by suicidal thoughts. In his despair, he resolves to reconnect with both his past and the natural world. Abducting his children, he embarks on a long, fateful journey, walking to the Welsh borders of his childhood. In his confusion his journey is a grasping at some kind of an understanding of his powerful loss.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pears (In the Place of Fallen Leaves) opens his robust, resonant novel with a car accident on a Birmingham, England, roadway that claims the life of six-year-old Sara Ithell and costs her father, Owen, his right hand before backtracking to Owen's childhood in the early 1970s at the mercy of an absent father and a feeble mother. His best memories are of days spent on his grandparents' rugged Welsh farm, and he eventually finds happiness after he marries and starts a family with Mel. But after the accident, the happy family swoops into a downward spiral of dejection and painful psychological trauma as a despondent Mel absconds with the two surviving children to another man's home, and, after some obsessive deliberation, Owen kidnaps them from school and sets off on an epic journey of self-discovery and atonement that reveals Owen to be an oppressed and fascinating man forsaken by luck. This impressive, skillful novel portrays love and devotion in a unique, haunting way.
