Welcome to the eighth of my ‘Year of the Book’ posts, in which I take the books I received in my 2025 book advent – each cover representing an animal from the Chinese Zodiac – and review them for you!
August is the GOAT (or sheep!) and the book is The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon.
Read on to find out more…
Blurb: Summer, 1976
Mrs Creasy is missing and The Avenue is alive with whispers. As the summer shimmers endlessly on, ten-year-olds Grace and Tilly decide to take matters into their own hands.
But as doors and mouths begin to open and the cul-de-sac starts giving up its secrets, the amateur detectives will find more than they could have imagined…
Review: Part mystery, but all coming-of-age/neighbourhood drama, this story follows the residents of The Avenue in English suburbia across two different time periods – November 1967 and August 1976 – in the search for what has happened to the missing Mrs Creasy and where her disappearance started.
We start with 10 year old Grace’s viewpoint, as she and her quieter best friend Tilly decide to tackle the mystery themselves by finding God in their street in the hopes that that holy shepherd would then bring home his missing ‘sheep’ safely. But it immediately becomes clear, even through the children’s unworldly eyes, that everyone in their community has secrets they are guarding and that Mrs Creasy had had a sympathetic ear and a very sharp mind for joining the dots.
Although there are three linked mysteries running through the book – Mrs Creasy’s vanishing; the fire back in ’67; the missing baby that set the match under an already simmering pot back then – the main heart of the story is an exploration of ‘Little England’ attitudes. The hypocrisy of a small community that prides itself on righteousness but mistakes conformity for morality and harbours a deep suspicion (easily escalated to fear or disgust) of anyone who doesn’t follow the herd.
Along with Grace’s narrative, the story dots from house to house, letting us behind the doors and inside the minds of the adults surrounding her; exposing their worries, prejudices, secrets and lies. But I was glad when the story touched back with the two best friends each time, because Grace and Tilly represented an authentic and wonderful depiction of girlhood friendship and the tween struggles with identity on the cusp of teenhood.
The whole novel perfectly captures the feelings, sights, sounds and smells of the period and place (in my experience as someone who grew up in the decade following it), and the ominous, claustrophobic feel of growing up in a small, closed (and closed-minded) community.
About the author:
Joanna Cannon graduated from Leicester Medical School and worked as a hospital doctor, before specialising in psychiatry. Her novels, The Trouble With Goats and Sheep and Three Things About Elsie, were both Sunday Times bestsellers and Richard and Judy picks. Her new novel, A Tidy Ending, was published in April 2022. She lives in the Peak District with her dog, Lewis.
Website: https://joannacannon.wordpress.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joannacannonauthor/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drjocannon
X/Twitter: https://x.com/JoannaCannon
