The Land of Decoration

Description

Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Betty Trask Prize, The Land of Decoration is blissfully inventive, brilliantly written, with a huge heart, and a tense, pulsing plot - it introduces a young heroine who will change the way you see the world. 'An extraordinary and peculiarly haunting novel' Chris Cleave, author of The Other Hand A RICHARD AND JUDY BOOK CLUB PICK My name is Judith McPherson. I am ten years old. On Monday a miracle happened. Judith doesn't have much. The house she shares with her devoutly religious father is full of dusty relics, reminders of the mother Judith never knew. Bullied at school, she finds comfort in creating a miniature world in her bedroom - a world of wonder she calls The Land of Decoration. Perhaps, she thinks, if she makes it snow in The Land of Decoration there will be no school on Monday. Sure enough, when Judith opens her curtains the next day, the world beyond her window has turned white. And that's when her troubles begin.

Grace McCleen lives in London. The Land of Decoration is her first novel.

An extraordinary and peculiarly haunting novel -- Chris Cleave * author of The Other Hand * Extraordinary -- Emma Donoghue, author of Room Enchanting and compellingly dark... This is an intensely personal story, but told with a lightness of touch and air of magic -- Nigella Lawson * Mail on Sunday Books of the Year * A tremendously affecting novel, skillfully and arrestingly written, and one that packs a big emotional punch * Sunday Times * Both sinister and sharply intriguing, with a completely convincing eleven-year-old narrator caught in fundamentalism, school persecution and the edge of the miraculous -- A.S. Byatt * Guardian, Books of the Year *