Very good characterisation of children’s minds and wants

I started reading this a few years ago but it didn’t really grab me. This time around I slipped into it a bit easier, & I did end up enjoying it. Yes, it’s very middle-class & comes with the usual eccentricities of that class, but that actually helps the story.

I found some of the characters difficult to relate to or to sympathise with, but that actually made the ending feel more satisfying so I suspect that was the emotion that the author wanted to provoke. I liked the use of foreshadowing which kept me wondering throughout the rest of the story until the conclusion answered all the questions. It made the book that more interesting but at the same time didn’t spoil the ending for me, which can sometimes be the case.

I thought this book was ok, but I can’t say I was engrossed in it. An easy read for entertainment really.
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I like Esther Freud's writing. She seems to have a niche of writing about uneven relationships in hippy chick settings.

In The Wild, two families are drawn together when a single mother of two children - Francine - rents a couple of rooms from another single parent at school who has three daughters (William). William commands an ideal of communal, self-sustaining living at his ramshackle home in the country ('The Wild'), where they eat and make much of what they need, and the children are encouraged to learn through work and creative play without television or other modern distractions.

A romantic relationship soon builds between Francine and William, but with Francine's children's having very opposing views on William's true nature, is William really the knight in shining armour that he portrays?

This was an enjoyable read, with excellent characters and a great sense of place. The conflicted, innocent emotions of the children were especially well handled.

4 stars - although not a book to remember necessarily, it was an enjoyable page-turner nonetheless. ( )

This book tells the story of an unusual blended family, in which William, a man with sole custody of his three daughters, rents rooms to Francine, a woman with custody of her son and daughter. The house is an old bakery and the atmosphere is something like a commune, complete with a charismatic leader of sorts in the form of William. Francine's daughter, Tess, worships William and wants him to like her and care for Francine, while Francine's son, Jake, is skeptical of William's motives.

The story is told in third person, mainly from Tess's point of view. The beginning is slightly disorienting because there are a lot of names and characters to assimilate. I was close to drawing up a family tree to indicate all of the relationships, but eventually I sorted it out. Once all the characters had settled into my head, the book went by very quickly. The opening scene is shocking and there is an element of suspense; the rest of the book involves catching up to that moment and eventually learning the aftermath. Tess is the strongest character, because we are in her head so much. All of the characters have their moments and any of them could have made an interesting story on their own as well. I would especially have liked to follow more of Honour's story, Honour being the oldest of William's daughters. ( )

Not as exotically compelling as her Hideous Kinky. But even if not set in Morocco, it is still firmly set in the world of childhood. I haven't been the child of a broken marriage, a hapless mother who attaches herself to men who love their own children more and a disinterested father, but I can certainly feel what it is like from reading this novel. ( )