Idle Grounds

A Novel

By: Krystelle Bamford

Narrated by: Robyn Holdaway

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for First Fiction
Finalist for Scotland’s National Book Award for Debut Fiction

“This debut novel is superb. Idle Grounds is a remarkable, preternatural study of a family reckoning with its own history … Bamford’s arresting novel briefly unveils the strangeness [of childhood] once again.” —The Telegraph

In this mesmerizing, sharply funny story about a family in decline, set in 1989 New England, a group of young cousins wander deep into the woods their grandparents once owned—finding that the farther they go, the stranger their surroundings become.

As always with these things it started with a birthday party.

Lingering at the edge of a family party, a troop of cousins loses track of the youngest child among them. With their parents preoccupied with bickering about decades-old crises, the children decide to investigate themselves—to the rickety chicken coop, the barn and its two troublesome horses, and into the woods that once comprised their late grandmother’s property. The more the children search, and the deeper they walk, the more unsettling the woods become and the more lost they are, caught between their aunt’s home in the present day, their parents’ childhood home just through the trees, and the memory of the house their grandmother grew up in. Soon, what began as a quest for answers gives way to a journey that undermines everything they’ve been told about who they are, where they came from, and what they deserve.

Told in the young cousins’ collective voice, in a mode that moves between childhood memory, New England Gothic, and a Reagan-era Nancy Drew, Idle Grounds is an “unsettling and sharply funny” (The Guardian) exploration of the interior lives of children and a gripping meditation on birthright, decline, and the weight of family history. A fable of the distortions of privilege and the impossibility of keeping secrets hidden, this is a novel about straying from home—only to come back unraveled, unsettled, and irrevocably changed.

Critic reviews

"Robyn Holdaway narrates this atmospheric debut about a summer afternoon gone wrong. As a fractious extended family gathers for a celebration in 1989, a pack of cousins roam the creepy woods around the house, looking for their suddenly missing youngest and oldest members. Holdaway carefully mixes the wry voice of the unnamed narrator, recalling this episode from far in the future, with those of the characters as they appear and disappear. The children alternate between bravado and fear as they move deeper into the woods and closer to possible truths about the past that have been withheld from them. Holdaway expertly evokes the dreamlike nature of childhood memory, when fantasy and reality intertwine and time becomes meaningless."

Character driven fiction at it's finest

4.5 stars rounded up for this short little book that packs a punch. I don't think this book will be for everyone (hence the other review with 1 star) but if you like a "voicy" novel or a character driven novel particularly when the characters are a bunch of young cousins on a self appointed mission at a family gathering - this is the book for you! I feel like the author honestly should get 5 stars for the voice alone. These kids were SO well written! There is a little bit of a mystery thread that kind of pulls you along as well. And, there is a somewhat climactic event at the end but this is definitely not plot driven. So be sure you know that going in - it's really a story about one afternoon in the lives of these cousins who neglected by their parents get up to mischief. And it is just weirdly so good!