Meeting: Community Room | Knowlton Library
Title: A Crooked Tree
Author: Una Mansion
Title available at the Knowlton Library. Discussion brochure also provided with checkout. Brochure will also be available in electronic format via Book Lovers Newsletter.
On the last day of the school year, widowed single mum Faye Gallagher is driving her five bickering kids home when she snaps. Swerving on to the hard shoulder, she forces 12-year-old Ellen to get out of the car and walk the last five miles. Hours later, darkness has fallen and still Ellen hasn’t made it back. While Una Mannion ably fulfills the promise of its suspenseful start, providing carefully orchestrated lawlessness, bare-fisted violence and a long-haired predator sinisterly named “Barbie Man”, this is no crime novel. As the story unfurls, its deeper menace and mystery will derive not from child abduction but from secretive family dysfunction and the ever-confounding travails of adolescence. A Crooked Tree is an incredible debut novel, telling a poignant coming-of-age story with confidence. Mannion explores facets of grief and pain, intermixed with adolescent experiences, to create an emotionally powerful story. Una Mannion’s debut novel A Crooked Tree is not a thriller, though it harnesses the power of suspense with superb skill. Instead, Mannion has created an intense, character-driven story that paints a portrait of a fractured family and the repercussions of one summer evening.
This group is currently full and closed to new members.