Lanny

LoveReading Says

This short novel is intriguing and playful, with even the text shifting about on the page, as though we’re eavesdropping onto the characters’ overlapping conversations. Lanny, is about a young boy who loves nature and lives in a village not too far from London, and who goes missing. He has the regular two parents, and parents’ friends, but there is also another character: the mysterious and mythical Dead Papa Toothwort who is part of the earth and yet can shape-shift to the size of flea or into an old bath. He can slide in and out of people, and he is often angry. What he likes best of all and what makes him happy is to listen to the villagers talk, and he especially likes to listen to Lanny. Dead Papa Toothwort is a kind of modern day Greenman, symbolising rebirth, death, and the green of life. And he neatly compares with Lanny, who is very much a human, but also a kind of delightful fairy child who still sees the wonder in the natural world. A beautiful book. 

Selected by Claire Fuller, Our Autumn 2022 Guest Editor. Click here to read the full Guest Editor Piece.

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