Every new novel from the Carnegie Medal winning author and past Laureate na nÓg is a highly anticipated event and fans will certainly not find themselves disappointed by this outstanding offering.
Set in 1846 as the potato famine swept across Ireland, it introduces us to Nell, the eldest daughter of a family that are tenants on the estate of Lord Wicken, a wealthy English aristocrat. She has been forced to give up her studies and start work as a scullery maid in his home to keep her family from starvation.
It is here she meets John Browning, the nephew and heir of Wicken, and they fall in love despite the fact that class and nationality should keep them apart. But whilst Lord Wicken, is the ultimate malignant landlord, completely without feeling for his starving tenants, Nell sees that Johnny is different. It is an extraordinary achievement to be able to use the verse novel form to powerfully present an unflinching account of the hardship and horror of the Great Hunger, while at the same time telling a compelling love story full of hope.
The verse form is both accessible and immersive and creates a very intense and unforgettable reading experience. This is a powerful exploration of love in all its forms and a profound and eloquent evocation of a devastating period in Ireland's history.
The outstanding novel from the Carnegie Medal-winning, former Laureate na nÓg Sarah Crossan; thought-provoking and incredibly moving, it explores love and family during The Great Hunger Ireland, 1846.
Nell is working as a scullery maid in the kitchen of the Big House. Once she loved school and books and dreaming. But there's not much choice of work when the land grows food that rots in the earth. Now she is scrubbing, peeling, washing, sweeping for Sir Philip Wicken, the man who owns her home, her family's land, their crops, everything. His dogs are always well fed, even as famine sets in.
Upstairs in the Big House, where Nell is forbidden to enter, is Johnny Browning, newly arrived from England: the young nephew who will one day inherit it all. And as hunger and disease run rampant all around them, a spark of life and hope catches light when Nell and Johnny find each other.
This is a love story, and the story of a people being torn apart. This is a powerful and unforgettable novel from the phenomenally talented Sarah Crossan.
'One of our finest novelists. Where the Heart Should Be is a thing of beauty.' - Phil Earle
'Sarah Crossan’s writing is powerful and necessary' - Matt Goodfellow
Praise for Toffee;
'Utterly Sublime'- Cecelia Ahern
'Impossible not to read it in a single gulp' - The Times
'Undoubtedly one of the best books of the year' - Irish Times
Compelling and beautifully wrought' - The Sunday Times
A book that changes its reader for the better' - The Guardian
One of our most original writers' - John Boyne
Praise for One;
'The best book I've read in years. It's a spectacular testament to love. It blows your head back' - Katherine Rundell
Author
About Sarah Crossan
Sarah Crossan has lived in Dublin, London and New York, and now lives in East Sussex. She graduated with a degree in Philosophy and Literature before training as an English and drama teacher at the University of Cambridge. The Weight of Water and Apple and Rain were both shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal. In 2016, Sarah won the CILIP Carnegie Medal as well as the YA Book Prize, the CBI Book of the Year award and the CLiPPA Poetry Award for her novel, One.
Sarah is the go-to writer of the free verse novel in the UK and Ireland, and is the current Laureate na nÓg (Ireland’s Children’s Literature Laureate). Her theme as Laureate is #WeAreThePoets, a two-year project inspiring young people to express themselves through poetry and verse.
