The Trouble With Goats and Sheep

"Everyone was so certain of what had happened, but maybe the present crawled into our memories and disturbed them as well, and perhaps the past wasn't quite as certain as we would like it to be"

The Trouble With Goats And Sheep is the first novel by British author, Joanna Cannon. During the heatwave of 1976, Margaret Creasy disappears from Number 8 The Avenue. "Mrs Creasy was still missing on Tuesday, and she was even more missing on Wednesday, when she'd arranged to sell raffle tickets for the British Legion. By Thursday, her name was being passed over garden fences and threaded along the queue at shop counters"

Ten-year-old best friends, Grace Bennett and Tilly Albert are as curious as the rest of the street. Did she leave of her own accord, and if so, why? Perhaps she was murdered! Words from the Vicar after church on Sunday ("If God exists in a community, no one will be lost") set Grace and Tilly on a mission: if they find God (who is EVERYWHERE), perhaps Mrs Creasy (who was nice and was teaching Tilly to knit) will be safe.

As Grace and Tilly search for God, they notice that people in the street are behaving quite strangely. Perhaps it is the heat: "July had found its fiercest day yet. The sky was ironed into an acid blue, and even the clouds had fallen from the edges, leaving a faultless page of summer above our heads". They are warned to stay away from Number 11 (Walter Bishop's house) but no one will say exactly why: "It was better for children if they didn't know all the facts, she'd said, and the words always left her mouth in italics".

They are fairly sure that Mr Creasy didn't kill her: he isn't fat enough and doesn't have a moustache. Anyway, he's much too upset: "He missed her reassurance. The way she stole his disquiet and diluted it, and how her unconcern would pull him through their day. She never dismissed his worries, she just disentangled them, smoothing down the edges and spreading them out until they became thin and insignificant".

Cannon uses multiple narrative strands to tell the story, which covers two months of summer during 1976. Each chapter is headed with a date and an address in The Avenue, so that it is clear whose perspective is being shown. As well as this, Cannon intersperses throughout this, flashbacks to 1967, starting in December and receding some six weeks, tell of incidents that led up to the fire at Walter Bishop's house. The reader gradually learns why the street is so anxious about the reason Margaret Creasy has left and what will happen when (or if) she returns.

Using young Grace as a narrator is a stroke of genius: her innocence, her youthful perspective and her candour, as well as often being a source of humour, lead to some remarks of profound wisdom and ingenuous prescience. Cannon's characters are familiar: people we meet every day in the corner shop or on the bus. Each has flaws and secrets: one might say that, except for Tilly Albert, none of the characters is entirely blameless; at one point, even Grace's behaviour is less than stellar.

The understated cover hides a novel of true brilliance. Cannon explores guilt and grief and shame, the perils of being different, the need to be accepted, and how easily a community will ostracise and persecute. Cannon's prose is exquisite: it is difficult not to fill a review with quotes like "I had learned not to take any notice, because she carried worrying around with her at all times, like a spare cardigan" and "My mother looked at him and did loud staring" and "…the only sound I could hear, as I lay on the grass, was Mrs Morton's knitting needles tutting against each other in disapproval".

Cannon's plot is original but wholly credible. She skilfully peppers the tale with clues, but even astute readers, those who guess the identity of the arsonist, and that of the baby snatcher well before they are revealed, have a breath-taking shock coming in the last pages. This outstanding debut novel is a moving, thought provoking and delightful read. Highly recommended!

I can't resist a few more quotes for anyone who enjoyed those already included. "I watched her without end, inspecting her life for the slightest vibration of change, and yet she knew none of this. My worries were noiseless; a silent obsession that the only friend I had ever made would be taken from me, just because I hadn't concentrated enough"

"Margaret liked to mend. It made her happy to see things repaired, and the repairing made John feel safe. Now she was gone, he could imagine the threads beginning to loosen and the edges beginning to lift, and all the holes that would form for his life to fall into…Now he had become untethered, drifting between the layers of his own thinking…"

"I wondered where this sense of community was. If it was waiting in the back of Sheila Dakin's pantry, or hidden in the loneliness of Eric Lamb's shed. I wondered if it sat with May Roper on her crocheted settee, or scratched itself into the paintwork of Walter Bishop's rotten windows. Perhaps it was in all of those places, but I had yet to find it" "It was a very small 'Oh', but I had learned from my mother that words didn't necessarily have to be big to make a good impression on people"

"It's the small decisions, the ones that slip themselves into your day unnoticed, the ones that wrap their weight in insignificance. These are the decisions that bury you" "The verge was thick with summer: stitchwort and buttercups, and towering foxgloves which blew clouds of pollen from rich, purple bells. The breeze had dropped, leaving us in a razor of heat which cut into the skin at the tops of my arms and made speaking too much of an effort. We trudged in a single line; silent pilgrims drawn towards a shrine of tea and digestives, all strapped into Sunday clothes and decorated in sweat"