After his mother’s death, 17-year-old Adam is sent to stay with his uncle Henry on his houseboat in the west country for the summer. Henry, a divinity scholar-turned guru and spiritual leader, belongs to the 60s free love movement, an era that already seems obsolete here in 1970s Somerset. The bourgeois-minded residents want him and his hippy friends – including Strawberry, a macrobiotic diet-obsessed American girl living in a shed in the woods – out of their village, but he refuses to leave without a fight, and Adam finds himself drawn into the struggle.
Despite the losses that litter the text, it’s a comparatively gentle coming-of-age story, and Lott is excellent when it comes to the psychology of a grieving adolescent. The conclusion didn’t quite pack the punch it might have, but the languor of the long hot summer setting echoes the treacly stupor of the plot.
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