Prior to its publication last January, Joanna Cannon’s debut novel was tipped as a likely hit of 2016 and the author appeared in the Observer’s annual New Year feature about debut novelists to watch. Expectations were fulfilled and The Trouble With Goats and Sheep became a bestseller; less foreseeable was quite how prescient this winning parable would come to seem over the course of the year.
The action centres on the baking summer of 1976 and while heatwaves have been the focus of other debuts – The Cement Garden most (in)famously – the weather here is skilfully promoted from backdrop to insidious personality: oppressive; coercive; according to some of the residents of “the avenue” responsible for all kinds of strange behaviour. However, we soon realise that there is more to the disappearance of No 8’s Mrs Creasy than a rush of blood to the head, and that conspiracy, not borrowed cups of sugar, has been holding the neighbourhood together.
The novel alternates between the perspectives of the avenue’s adult residents and the first-person narration of 10-year-old bright-spark Grace, whose precocity is robust enough to offset suspicions of feyness, in spite of her fondness for Angel Delight. Along with her sidekick, Tilly, she decides to track down the missing woman, a mission that is part public service, part divine duty: “sheep need a shepherd to keep them safe. The vicar said so,” she informs her mother.
It hardly needs saying that the book’s sheep and goats, sinners and saints, turn out not to be separate species but one and the same. Moreover Cannon, a psychiatric doctor, suggests economically and with sensitivity the secrets, shame and sorrow that lurk behind every net curtain, as well as the toxicity of the mob, the us-and-them mentality that festers throughout the book. Even its moments of out-of-the-mouths-of-babes humour come with a subtle reminder, elsewhere, that it is not just phrases but prejudices that young minds pick up.
Although the book’s messages – of acceptance, empathy and compassion – are unmistakable, it is never preachy; plot and structure are deftly, cleverly handled and descriptions combine delicacy with flair, perhaps most notably in the case of “a river of starlings… spinning out their harmony across a bleached sky”.
With its combination of wit and heart, it’s easy to see why Cannon’s tale earned so many fans; with its implicit plea for understanding it will doubtless continue to add them in the months to come.
• The Trouble With Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon is published by The Borough Press (£7.99). To order a copy for £6.55 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
