Short enough that even I finished it.

One evening, start to finish, sitting on the floor with my back against the radiator because the sofa had washing on it.

I'd forgotten how nasty this one gets. In my memory it was a gentle little thing about a duckpond, and then there's the worm, and the coin, and Ursula Monkton being awful in the specific way that only lands if you were seven once and had an adult be lovely to you in front of your parents and not lovely afterwards.

The Hempstocks are the reason to read it. Three women, one farmhouse, all of time in a bucket, no explanations offered and none needed.

I told my brother it was set in Sussex and he says it's very much not Sussex, so please take my geography with a pinch of salt.

Eight and not nine because the framing at the start and end didn't do a great deal for me, and I'd have been happy staying inside the memory. It is, though, the only book I've finished in one sitting all year, and there's a tower of unread paperbacks by the door that would love to know how this one got the privilege.