LoveReading Says
Goosebumps still compete in a race down my arms when I think about The Snakes, it is remarkable, truly remarkable, so please just trust me when I say this is a must-read. Bea and Dan rent out their flat so they can travel, stopping off at her brother’s hotel in France on route. When Bea’s parents unexpectedly visit, Dan can’t understand why Bea has kept them at arms length and refused their financial help all of these years, surely it can’t hurt to get to know them?
Sadie Jones is a master storyteller, apparently simple sentences gang together to create a slicing tension. There is a purity to the writing, even though the very darkest of human attributes are so wonderfully and tellingly observed as the tale unfolds. This isn’t a comfortable read, but gosh it’s compelling, I sat and read it in one heady afternoon.
I felt on high alert, my mind unclouded as I tasted, tested, scrutinised both the thoughts of the characters, and my own. ‘The Snakes’ is powerful and provocative, not in a shouty, boastful way, it slid into my mind, creating and filling secret spaces, and when I reached the last few pages, and read the final words, I just stopped and sat in wondering heart-hammering silence.
This is one of my picks of the month, in fact I already know that The Snakes will be one of my picks of the year.
About The Snakes
"The Snakes is many things--a parable and an ancient drama where a father's greed devours his children, a police procedural, an avid take on tabloid venality, and a bitter comedy, superbly observed. Sadie Jones writes with pitiless aplomb and corrosive intelligence."--Louise Erdrich
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The Snakes Synopsis
"The Snakes is many things--a parable and an ancient drama where a father's greed devours his children, a police procedural, an avid take on tabloid venality, and a bitter comedy, superbly observed. Sadie Jones writes with pitiless aplomb and corrosive intelligence."--Louise Erdrich
A chilling page-turner and impossible to put down, THE SNAKES is Sadie Jones at her best: breathtakingly powerful, brilliantly incisive, and utterly devastating.
This gripping novel by Sadie Jones tells the tense and violent story of the Adamsons, a dysfunctional English family, with exceptional wealth, whose darkest secrets come back to bite them. Set mostly in rural France during contemporary times, THE SNAKES is an all-consuming read and a devastating portrait of how money corrupts, and how chance can deal a deadly hand.
THE SNAKES exposes the damage wreaked by parents on children as observed by a new member of the family, Dan, a mixed-race man from Peckham who marries Bea, the daughter who refuses to take any of her father's filthy money. But when Bea's brother Alex (who runs a shabby hotel in Paligny, France) dies suddenly in unexplained circumstances, the confusion and suspicion which arise bring other dark family secrets--and violence--to the surface. And none of the family, even the good members, go untouched.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780062897039 |
| Publication date: |
30th June 2020 |
| Author: |
Sadie Jones |
| Publisher: |
Harper Perennial an imprint of HarperCollins |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
464 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Modern and Contemporary Fiction
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| Other Genres: |
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| Recommendations: |
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Sadie Jones Press Reviews
The Snakes is superbly written, each sentence punctuated by a drumbeat of menace, each word placed with a master's touch. I keep thinking about the questions it poses: about what it is to be good in these imperfect times; about how we can protect our humanity in the face of narcissism and greed. Yet for all its depth and mystery, The Snakes is also just a thrillingly good read -- Elizabeth Day A suspenseful, beautifully written thriller about the corruption of money and abuse within a dysfunctional family - Guardian
An all-encompassing read from the first page to the devastating final paragraph -- Alice O'Keeffe - The Bookseller
Masterful, terrifying, dangerous, with an ending that is as uncompromising as the build-up is truthful. The Snakes is as beautifully written as it is dark and honest. -- Rachel Joyce I was absolutely gripped by this original and beautifully-told story of a couple enmeshed in a nest of vipers -- a rich family of criminals. Its evocation of a sinister French house, the corruption of love and the powerlessness of good is both haunting and chilling. Nobody contemporary writes about unhappy families as well as Sadie Jones. -- Amanda Craig -
About Sadie Jones
Sadie Jones is a novelist and screenwriter who was born and brought up in London. Her first novel, The Outcast ('Riveting', Lionel Shriver; 'Devastatingly good', Daily Mail) was the winner of the Costa First Novel Award. It was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize and was a Richard and Judy Summer Reads Number One bestseller. Sadie adapted The Outcast for BBC Television in 2014. Her second novel, Small Wars, ('Outstanding', The Times; 'One of the best books about the English at war ever', Joel Morris), was published in 2009, and longlisted for the Orange Prize. Her third, in 2010, was The Uninvited Guests. 2009 ('...a shimmering comedy of manners and disturbing commentary on class... a brilliant novel.' Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder. ‘Delightful, eerie novel ... puts one in mind of Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black ...’ The Daily Telegraph.) Her most recent novel, published May 2014, is Fallout, ('Intoxicating and immersive.' The Sunday Times; 'Intense.. unflinching', The New York Times), is now out in paperback. Sadie is married to the architect, Tim Boyd, and they live in West London with their two children.
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