An unassuming exploration of what it means to belong and the power of friendship in a rural community.
I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from Sarah Franklin’s second novel with its premise that promised to explore what it means to belong to a rural community in a rapidly changing world. To me this sounded rather oblique but Franklin illustrates it perfectly with this story of two very different women, a decade apart in age, both struggling to find a place to call home and feel like an integral and valued member of the community they live in. The result is a triumph and How to Belong is both a heart-warming and surprisingly insightful novel with superior characterisation and memorably authentic dialogue. Set against a backdrop of the Forest of Dean and a small, insular community where everybody knows each other, this unassuming novel with a strong sense of place and effortless prose left me feeling decidedly hopeful.
Jo Butler is a local girl made good who hails from the Forest of Dean and has spent the past decade living in London and working as a barrister. Disillusioned with the reality of her career and the life she is leading, Jo returns home for Christmas and her parent’s final year of running the butcher’s shop which has been in the family for two generations. Making an impetuous decision to return to the place where she feels she belongs, Jo convinces her parents to let her run the shop in the face of dwindling custom and soaring costs. Forced by circumstance to rent a room in a cottage occupied by aloof and taciturn farrier, Tessa Price, whom herself is isolated from the local community, Jo finds things are more difficult than she imagined. Her relationship with her long-term best friend, Liam, is strained, her parents have moved away and in the face of supermarket competition the business is on its knees. For Jo, feeling like she’s no longer welcome or belongs is a new and demoralising feeling, but for Tessa it’s something she knows well. A traumatic childhood with an abusive mother has left her suffering from low self-esteem and she is plagued by a mysterious and possibly debilitating physical condition that has led her to withdraw from the woman she loves and turn her back on society.
Despite both women being poles apart and the initial barriers to communication that Tessa uses to keep people who might care about her at arms length, an unlikely friendship begins. Life is at a crossroads for both of the women in very different ways and as they wrestle with what the future might hold for them it is Jo’s need to be useful and her perseverance that sees her make a breakthrough on identifying Tessa’s health issues. It is through assisting Tessa and enabling her to think beyond a lonely future within the four walls of the cottage that Jo starts to see that she can actually be useful in the Forest of Dean community that she treasures.
Chapters alternate between the perspectives of Jo and Tessa, both of whom are incredibly well-drawn and characters that I found sympathetic with appreciable dilemmas. From Jo’s initial concerns that she is letting everyone down by leaving her job in London and returning home through to her naive belief that her old friends would still be the same people she left behind and Tessa’s fear of being a burden, Franklin’s characters are honest and relatable and this drew me in to their story. A gentle vein of suspense runs throughout the novel with the future of both women up in the air, primarily from a personal angle for Tessa and in Jo’s case, a matter of her livelihood. My sole reservation about the novel came in the final stages and what I felt was a rather abrupt ending which jarred with the books gentle pace. On the strength of this second novel I will definitely be seeking out Sarah Franklin’s debut novel, Shelter.
Jo Butler is a local girl made good who hails from the Forest of Dean and has spent the past decade living in London and working as a barrister. Disillusioned with the reality of her career and the life she is leading, Jo returns home for Christmas and her parent’s final year of running the butcher’s shop which has been in the family for two generations. Making an impetuous decision to return to the place where she feels she belongs, Jo convinces her parents to let her run the shop in the face of dwindling custom and soaring costs. Forced by circumstance to rent a room in a cottage occupied by aloof and taciturn farrier, Tessa Price, whom herself is isolated from the local community, Jo finds things are more difficult than she imagined. Her relationship with her long-term best friend, Liam, is strained, her parents have moved away and in the face of supermarket competition the business is on its knees. For Jo, feeling like she’s no longer welcome or belongs is a new and demoralising feeling, but for Tessa it’s something she knows well. A traumatic childhood with an abusive mother has left her suffering from low self-esteem and she is plagued by a mysterious and possibly debilitating physical condition that has led her to withdraw from the woman she loves and turn her back on society.
Despite both women being poles apart and the initial barriers to communication that Tessa uses to keep people who might care about her at arms length, an unlikely friendship begins. Life is at a crossroads for both of the women in very different ways and as they wrestle with what the future might hold for them it is Jo’s need to be useful and her perseverance that sees her make a breakthrough on identifying Tessa’s health issues. It is through assisting Tessa and enabling her to think beyond a lonely future within the four walls of the cottage that Jo starts to see that she can actually be useful in the Forest of Dean community that she treasures.
Chapters alternate between the perspectives of Jo and Tessa, both of whom are incredibly well-drawn and characters that I found sympathetic with appreciable dilemmas. From Jo’s initial concerns that she is letting everyone down by leaving her job in London and returning home through to her naive belief that her old friends would still be the same people she left behind and Tessa’s fear of being a burden, Franklin’s characters are honest and relatable and this drew me in to their story. A gentle vein of suspense runs throughout the novel with the future of both women up in the air, primarily from a personal angle for Tessa and in Jo’s case, a matter of her livelihood. My sole reservation about the novel came in the final stages and what I felt was a rather abrupt ending which jarred with the books gentle pace. On the strength of this second novel I will definitely be seeking out Sarah Franklin’s debut novel, Shelter.