“The Last Kings of Sark” is about love and about the long summers like you experienced when you were young and carefree. “The world was blond, the wind was warm. These were the days that were golden.”
The first part of the book is written from Jude’s point of view and sees her arrive in Sark at the beginning of summer to provide tuition to the only child, Pip, of Eddy and Esme. Things don’t start too well as they thought she would be a boy. (“My name is Jude. And because of Law, Hey and the Obscure, they thought I was a boy.”
Sark is painted as a small island with Jude being shipped in with meat supplies, and there are no cars on the island, and no roads, only golden paths which “were tree-lined, but the trees had grown up and bowed until they met at the top.” Bicycles are the mode of transport here.
Jude is 21, Pip is 16 and the hired help, Sofi, is 19 and, although at the beginning “I could tell straight away that Sofi didn’t like me,” their relationship develops into something special, what with Eddy often away on business and Esme bed-ridden. “It somehow worked, the three of us, tea after tea, tale after tale at the table.” And they also ventured outside to experience all the island.
But summer passes. “Our skin got darker and our hair got lighter, and summer passed like sand through our fingers.” And the love they develop for each other is lost forever although there is the promised reunion under the Eiffel Tower to look forward to. “I can’t wait to go. Baguettes man.”
The second half of the book is written differently with multiple points of views from the three characters from the first half as they all live in France but yet do not really see each other. And when Pip does meet Sofi “it feels forced, almost formal.” The feel is darker too with death and responsibilities rearing their heads.
Then the last chapter is a return to Sark to reminisce about that perfect summer once more “when we were young, when we were kings.”
So a coming of age novel where you can reminisce over the lost summers of youth, and also get into the lives of three characters you’ll come to love and long for them to be reunited once more.
Amazon UK Link: The Last Kings of Sark
Publication Date: 7 Nov 2013
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