Everlasting Lane

October 27, 2014
British author Lovett’s engrossing debut, partly based on events from his own childhood, follows 10-year-old Peter Lambert, who is uprooted by his mother to go live in a “dusty and undisturbed” cottage in the Amberley countryside in the mid-1970s after his WWII veteran father’s untimely death. Even more confounding than his new environment are his mother’s decision to change her name to Kat; her reference to the fact that he’d lived in the town before; and the plucky, dominating behavior of Anna-Marie, the girl next door. Peter befriends Anna-Marie along with Tommie Winslow, a schoolmate who eventually competes with Peter for the girl’s attentions. The unexpected trio bring Everlasting Lane to vibrant life along with a host of peripheral characters, including harsh grade school teacher Mr. Gale and a few local eccentrics such as reclusive Mr. Merridew, a hermit living in a wooded cabin, and Dr. Todd, a secretive physician who becomes Kat’s special friend. While Peter narrates the story with the naive, goofy curiosity of a young boy, there are also thin swaths of the bitterness and angst more befitting his aggrieved mother. She’s hiding a secret behind one of their cottage’s locked doors, and it becomes one of Peter’s burdensome obsessions. Familial melodrama and confusion are resolved and explained as Lovett’s creative tale broadens into an exploratory, discovery-filled journey for three zany outcasts—“a fluttering rabble of butterflies,” each taking in the world one revelation at a time.

Starred review from November 1, 2014
Debut novelist Lovett offers a dreamy portrait of an English childhood, with some sharp edges beneath the blur.Following the death of his father, 9-year-old Peter and his mother move from London to a mysterious house in the country. Peter states at the onset of the novel, "I can't promise that this is the way it was, not exactly, only that this was perhaps how it sometimes seemed to be." He tells and retells stories, all in luminous and evocative language, as he begins to realize that the secrets of the past are layered and complex. Among the many changes that occur quite quickly in Peter's life is his mother's strange request that he refer to her as Kat and keep the details of their home life to himself. That secret, and the secrets that begin to rise up all around him, become more difficult to protect when he meets Anna-Marie, a bossy neighborhood girl, and Tommie, an outcast schoolmate. Taking to the countryside, they begin to investigate a series of intertwined mysteries stemming from the discovery of a hidden room within Peter's new house, a museumlike nursery filled with artifacts for a lost baby girl that the children long to understand. The narrative is driven by images, connecting and unfolding like the mysteries beneath the surface: mirrors, clocks, butterflies and a storybook rambling through the physical Everlasting Lane, lush and green and seemingly unending. Deeper still is the reminder that the narrative itself is connected to the realm of imagination, as Peter muses on the idea that like stories, real life can be amended for happy endings and a second chance to make the right decision. Beautifully written, and as charming as it is dark, the novel unwraps the endless secrets that elude a child.

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September 15, 2014

Peter is at that phase where he doesn't quite understand adults and the consequences of one's actions. He fills his ten-year-old world with imagination, exploration, and playtime with his two new friends, Anna-Marie and Tommie; this helps him escape from his mother's sadness and the uneasy feeling that he did something to make her blue. Though the same age as Peter, Anna-Marie has a grown-up understanding of the world, which can get her into trouble. As Peter and friends travel down life's lane, they meet odd neighbors and encounter disapproving adults; Peter learns that adults can be weighed down by secrets, and he starts to realize how his actions affect others. VERDICT The experience told through a child's eye, with Peter always two steps behind Anna-Marie, is authentically rendered, and Lovett creates a realistically naive narrator in Peter. Although the viewpoint is simplified, Lovett's writing is sophisticated and evocative. Anna-Marie's dialog is cheeky and entertaining, yet she also has a vulnerable side and is endearing as an outcast and as Peter's fearless friend. The strong points in this sometimes meandering tale of a British childhood are the absorbing literary writing, the vibrancy of Anna-Marie, and the dynamic among the three friends. [Highlighted in Barbara Hoffert's "25 Key Indie Fiction Titles, Fall 2014-Winter 2015," 8/11/14, ow.ly/AnzgU.--Ed.]--Sonia Reppe, Stickney-Forest View P.L., IL

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2014
When nine-year-old Peter Lambert's father dies, he and his mother move to the village of Amberley and a cottage on Everlasting Lane. His guide to this new world is Anna-Marie, slightly older and more knowing, and they, along with a boy named Tommie, become friends. In Peter's vivid imagination, the village and its environs are transformed into places of magic. The ordinary becomes extraordinary, and mysteries abound. What is behind the hidden door in the cottage, and who is Alice, whose name the children find on a piece of embroidery? What secrets lie in Peter's mother's past? The games Peter plays with his friends and the reality he constructs are ways to make sense of the world. Meanwhile, the adults in the village and at school, some of whom would be at home on the pages of a Dickens novel, offer him alternative but not necessarily helpful perspectives. With nods to such children's classics as Alice in Wonderland, Lovett's first novel, which he says was inspired by a family tragedy, contemplates the often very fine line between imagination and reality.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)