Nine-year-old Tess has never seen anything like The Wild. An old
bakery, converted into a home, it has a fireplace big enough to sit
in, a garden with a badminton net and another one for vegetables. And
then there's William, its owner. Single father of three, he cooks
homemade ravioli, cuts trees down with a chainsaw and plays the
guitar. When her mother, Francine, rents two rooms from him, Tess can
hardly believe her luck. Her brother Jake, however, proves harder to
convince. As the two grown-ups begin to fall for each other, Tess
struggles to please the adults as well as win Jake round. But she
finds that good intentions don't always bring happiness and that
adults are disturbingly capable of making mistakes... <
'A beautiful book, savage and tender by turns ...
attending to Esther Freud's still, truthful voice becomes not only a
pleasure but a necessity' Jonathan Coe 'Wonderful ... Freud has a
precious and remarkable gift for creating fictional children. She is
infinitely patient with the subtle differences between the worlds of
children and adults, and her descriptions of the collisions between
them are hauntingly beautiful' The Times 'Ranks alongside Paddy Clarke
Ha Ha Ha as one of the very few great contemporary novels about
childhood' William Sutcliffe, Independent on Sunday 'I cannot remember
reading so exact and involving an evocation of what it is like to be a
child' Daily Telegraph
DIV>
Nine-year-old Tess has never seen anything
like The Wild. An old bakery, converted into a home, it has a
fireplace big enough to sit in, a garden with a badminton net and
another one for vegetables. And then there's William, its owner.
Single father of three, he cooks homemade ravioli, cuts trees down
with a chainsaw and plays the guitar. When her mother, Francine,
rents two rooms from him, Tess can hardly believe her luck. Her
brother Jake, however, proves harder to convince. As the two
grown-ups begin to fall for each other, Tess struggles to please the
adults as well as win Jake round. But she finds that good intentions
don't always bring happiness and that adults are disturbingly
capable of making mistakes... <
