"Sacred Country" is about a young girl, Mary Ward, who, at the age of six, realizes that she should be boy. The book is a chronicle of her life from that point on. I found the detailed descriptions of the odd things that captured Mary's curiosity as a child (and as an adult, in a different way) intriguing. I won't lie, this is a very sad story at times, and is hard to read in some parts because of Mary's loneliness. The loneliness is never stated and packs a harder punch because of it. All in all, this book explained to me in stunning writing, the process of finding all of the right worlds in oneself. And, dealing with them when they don't fit or express into a manageable form to the outside world. It is a coming of age story to the self and to life. I like to read to learn - about happiness, sadness, life - this book delivered in a big way for me.


A melange of characters crocheted to hook the reader.   December 6, 2001
 15 out of 18 found this review helpful

This is a can't be put down book. At first the topic seems unpromising, an infant girls transexual realisation. However this frame is used as a trellis to support a honeysuckle plot of intertwining tendrils. Not a word is wasted, not a word ommited in demonstrating not ony the wordsmith at work but also the artist. The book is funny, sad, tender and quite vicious all in one.


The most fantastic book ever published.   October 17, 2000
 23 out of 26 found this review helpful

In the summer of 1996, when I was feeling particularly confused and lonely I picked up a copy of sacred country and read it. Wow is the only word I can think of to summarise how I felt about the book. It gave me insight in to the struggles of others; the dilemas faced by Mary, Timmy, Estelle, Cord, Sonny Walter and the many other characters in the book opened my eyes to the world around me and made me alert to the emotions and insecurities of others. I have read the book 32 times since then and each time I find something else to break my heart or I notice something new in the story I never did before. The last time I read it I cried when Mary/Martin sat at the fountain in London wondering which parts of Mary she would miss when she finally became Martin. The way Rose Tremain creates a world into wich you can steo and find something new time and time again is fascinating. Whether it is Pearl's beauty, mary's struggle or Estelles madness that grips you the first time you read Sacred Country, you will find that it is something else entirely trhat grips you the second time. Fantasic, Tremain's most powerful work yet.


A celebration of human weakness and triumph   September 12, 1999
 21 out of 21 found this review helpful

Six year-old Mary stood quietly in the snow, with her family, as they mourned the death of King George VI, and thought "I am not Mary. That is a mistake. I am not a girl. I am a boy."

This is an enchanting story of people in a small village in the south of England trying to make sense of their lives.

It is not a book of tragedy. There is sadness, but there is joy. There is death but there is life. There is hopelessness but there is also the urge to become.

In its depiction of the complex network of relationships, there is probably more real truth about the way people are, than in a thousand psychology texts.

Walter with his dream of becoming a singer and songwriter believing that his dreams can never be fulfilled. Jimmy also nearly becoming trapped in a life not of his choosing. Both breaking out in their own special ways. Edward Harker, with his hat held discreetly in front of his trousers, believing that his feelings, at 61, for Irene are improper. And Irene never realising that a man could find her attractive as a woman.

Sonny, withdrawn inside himself occupied only with the farm that provided the family living. Estelle retreating into fantasy to escape a life of emptiness.

But, most of all, Mary who is really Martin, displaced in the family's cognisance by the arrival of the younger brother, despising him for his scrawny weakness, going through school to adulthood, meanwhile finding her true love and losing it, but growing triumphantly in her, then his, own individual way.