{"id":817,"date":"2012-04-20T06:48:14","date_gmt":"2012-04-20T06:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=817"},"modified":"2012-10-22T17:14:17","modified_gmt":"2012-10-22T17:14:17","slug":"ninepins-by-rosy-thornton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=817","title":{"rendered":"Ninepins by Rosy Thornton"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Sandstone Press 19 April 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

320pp, paperback, \u00a38.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner<\/strong><\/p>\n

Threats mass like thunderheads on the wide, low, Cambridgeshire skyline in Rosy Thornton\u2019s fourth novel, a story of domestic tension marbled with\u00a0unsettling psychological undercurrents. The setting is Ninepins, a remote house on the Fens built alongside a lode, or canal, which helps drains the watery land. It\u2019s the home of divorcee Laura and her asthmatic daughter Beth who, because of unreliable income from Laura\u2019s ex, are obliged to take in lodgers. This is the reason seventeen-year-old Willow enters their lives, a child with a bi-polar mother and a history of arson who has been in care since the age of thirteen and is now being helped into independent accomodation. Add ice, flooding and bullying friends to the mix and you have a solid picture of strain and unease in an ominous landscape.<\/p>\n

Thornton, whose previous novels have similarly explored everyday issues and family life, is clearly in thrall to her Fenland surroundings which she describes with a poet\u2019s devotion: \u2018The vast, open skies stretched in unbroken blue from dawn until dark, shifting through palest aquamarine to rich cobalt and back to pale again with the slow arc of the sun. Every day from mid-morning a shimmer of heat hazed the fields around Ninepins, their surface never dappled by the shadow of a cloud.\u2019<\/p>\n

This is a setting with many moods and Thornton does a good job of matching them to the quicksilver temperament of 12-year-old Beth, the introverted lodger and Laura\u2019s own unease about single parenting and starting a new relationship. Atmosphere may indeed be the strongest aspect of a distractingly readable novel which tidily captures the edgy see-saw drama of everyday life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner<\/p>\n

Thornton, whose previous novels have similarly explored everyday issues and family life, is clearly in thrall to her Fenland surroundings which she describes with a poet\u2019s devotion: \u2018The vast, open skies stretched in unbroken blue from dawn until dark, shifting through palest aquamarine to rich cobalt and back to pale again with the slow arc of the sun. Every day from mid-morning a shimmer of heat hazed the fields around Ninepins, their surface never dappled by the shadow of a cloud.\u2019[…] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=817"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2903,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817\/revisions\/2903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}