Reviews

Set on one day in 1979, The Fern Hedge explores the interconnected lives of three women – Alice, her daughter Kate, and grand-daughter Joanne. It is Alice's 80th birthday and she detests birthdays. The daughter of an Anglican rector, Alice has a lifelong and fierce commitment to rationality and mathematics. Eschewing Christianity after her Cambirdge degree and disillusioned after a working life attempting to educate 'empty-headed girls', she went on to have a marriage that dissappointed her and a daughter who bored her. Kate discovered a talent for cookery and found acceptance in a church, despite her mother's contempt for both, whilst Joanne, devoted to her pony and educated privately at Alice's expense (primarilly to annoy Kate, who believes in the state system) is coming to a transition in her life. As the women prepare for the birthday party their cumulative history is remembered and tensions between them mount. Events come to a head when Jo brings another resident to her grandmother's room to join the 'party', presenting them with an image of Alice's possible future with Alzheimer's. As the women face the enormity of the changes taking place in their lives, Kate has to decide whether to recognise how much she hates her mother and whether to forgive her whilst Jo has to come to terms with the next phase of growing up and Alice confronts a grim future, yet one in which she comes to understand Jo as someone who will take something of herself forward. Making use of both convnetional narrative and internal stream of consciousness as the distinctive voices respond to events and challenges, The Fern Hedge is Jean Harrison's second novel and confirms her as a talented and convincing author with extraordinary powers of observation on the human condition.
*Publisher: Cinnamon Press*