THE LAND OF NEVERENDINGS

released OUT NOW! 317 pages | Hardback/ebook

Author Kate saunders Publisher Faber & Faber

Watch a young child playing with a much-loved toy and you’ll see them entering a land of make-believe, a place where bears can talk and dolls can bicker and anything can happen. But what if their imagination could truly bring that world to life?

Eleven-year-old Emily is devastated by the recent death of her sister, Holly – and desperately misses Holly’s teddy Bluey, about whom she’d always spun stories of silliness and magical realms. But when she starts to be woken by toys camping and chatting in her home, she realises that the land of Smockeroon she’d created is real – and the divisions between that world and this are starting to break down.

This is a touching examination of a child’s grief, and the various characters – and their reactions both to Holly’s death and to Emily herself – are well-drawn and realised, with Emily’s neighbour Ruth, still grieving for her son and the stories she’d told him, a particular highlight. Emily’s need to remember the silliness and fun stories she’d shared with her sister translates well into the affectionate drawing of self-righteous penguins and angry ragdolls, but the absurdity of the toys’ dilemmas feels slight sitting alongside the seriousness of the “hard world” narrative, never quite balancing it out as intended. Rhian Drinkwater