It is the long hot summer of 1976, when it seemed that it would never rain again.
Mrs Creasy has gone missing from The Avenue and rumours abound.
Why did she leave?
Where has she gone?
Has she been murdered?
Ten year-olds Grace and Tilly decide to become amateur detectives to try to find out what happened to Mrs Creasy and become convinced that if they can find God on The Avenue then all will be well. Can they separate out the goats from the sheep?
As their search gets underway, Grace and Tilly uncover the deep, dark secrets of the residents of The Avenue.....all the secrets that Mrs Creasy knew....
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Joanna Cannon's The Trouble With Goats And Sheep is quite simply marvellous!
The audio book is beautifully read by the actress Paula Wilcox, showing off some pretty nifty voice skills with a good range of accents - she is totally convincing.
What I thought was going to be a story of the domestic dramas behind the doors of The Avenue, as glimpsed by two ten year-old girls, turned out to be something all together darker and more sinister than I was expecting.
How I love a story of secrets and lies in a small community! It turns out that The Avenue has plenty of dark secrets behind its front doors, which Joanna Cannon slowly reveals over the course of the story, and the many truths which are uncovered will leave you reeling. These are heavy truths indeed. Every resident has a story to tell and many have something they desperately want to hide - some you will certainly sympatise with and others will totally horrify you. You will not truly know any of the characters you meet in the course of the story until the very end.
The light relief is mostly provided by the antics of Grace and Tilly in their search for God among their neighbours. Many a truth is spoken out of the mouths of babes and their simple way of looking at the goings on of the adults around them is often hilarious - it is often a stab in the heart too.
I well remember the long, hot summer of 1976, when I was just a tad younger than Grace and Tilly, so it was very nostalgic looking at things through their eyes. I think that you can only truly appreciate this story if you remember the heady days of the 1970's too - when collecting Whimsies was a preoccupation and the Kays catalogue, with its weekly installment plans, was the retail outlet for many a home. I remember them both so well! I wonder what happened to all those Whimsies? I was never convinced that my mum prized them as much as I did, although she did try to look happy when I saved up enough pocket money to present her with another one!
I cannot recommend this one highly enough and I wonder how I managed to miss this when it first came out. No spoliers, but once you start this one you will be unable to stop until the truth in all its gut-wrenching, heart-stopping detail has been revealed. Outstanding!
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