At some point in most people’s lives, they have dreamt or pined after ‘the’ country life. One pictures themselves in the middle of a Constable painting with a Turner sky as a backdrop, or maybe they imagine themselves waking early, maybe with the rooster’s crow, but of course rosters can and will crow at any point of the day if so they wish. People dream of cosy fires and walks in the rolling hills recounting the flora and fauna as their cocker spaniel bounds along beside them, and if you’re lucky, a muse which you didn’t know to exist, touches you. This theme of a slow and spiritual country life versus a speedy, soul destructive city life has been visited and explored countless times. You only have to visit the works of the Romantic poets to witness these comparisons.

Kavenna is a fantastically hilarious writer with skepticism, irony and venom pouring out of her fingertips. Her writing brings a very interesting issue to the shimmering surface which is the contrast between those that have more than they need to those that don’t have at all. Cassandra tries to take back what the rich have taken (second homes) and give it back to the locals of the valley; the only flaw in this somewhat revolutionary plan is that it is entirely illegal. Our narrator who has always found herself swept along with life had hoped to find her own voice and break away, yet once more she finds herself in the role of an unwilling disciple to a cause she wouldn’t have ever thought of.