Mud

Emily Thomas has used memories of her unconventional early teenage life to write an exceptionally poignant and often very funny novel. Comparisons with I Capture the Castle have already been made – significantly it’s one of her narrator Lydia’s favourite books – and it’s easy to see why: there are real echoes of Dodie Smith’s classic in Mud, particularly in the tone and authenticity of the voice, and in its beautifully perceptive descriptions of a young girl growing up to understand more about herself, her flawed family and the adult world in general.

The story is told in diary form, the first entry being 9^th June, 1979. Lydia is 13, her mother died three years earlier, and her father is about to drop a bombshell. Due to a vague reference to ‘money troubles’ later upgraded to a confession that he is ‘completely out of money’, he is selling their house and moving the family to a boat, ‘a lovely old Thames Barge’ to be precise. What’s more Kate, his new girlfriend, will also be moving in with her three children.

The boat is big, but also leaky, smelly and uncomfortable. All readers will feel the shock and horror Lydia experiences when she is first shown her ‘cabin’. Life on board for its 8 inhabitants – Lydia’s impressively cool and sharp tongued sister Elsa is off to Cambridge so escapes, mostly – is a tetchy affair. Meanwhile, at her new school, Lydia, self-described as a ‘friend-repeller’ meets Kay. Chip-eating, straight-talking, wonderfully secure in who she is, Kay is the best thing in Lydia’s life and readers will love her too.

Friends, hairstyles, adolescent parties and crushes are all features in Lydia’s diary entries, as they would be for any teenager, but alongside that unfolds the story of her family’s own form of unhappiness. Kate and her father argue, Kate becoming increasingly bitter as her father spends more and more time away, his drinking getting out of control. It’s often a story of heart-break, but throughout it all there’s humour too – a scene with Elsa and Lydia at the bar of the pub a particularly good example. It all makes for an unforgettable read, honest, painful, and full of lines and observations to make you laugh out loud.

Like the mud that the Lady Beatrice sits on, Mud will stick to readers, it’s a book that colours your view of the world as the pages turn.