The Year the Gypsies Came

by Linzi Glass (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2006

  $3.25

  'In the spring of 1966, there was no one living with us, and the tension between my parents was left to grow like untended weeds. It was then that the gypsies came.' Emily Iris looks forward to the times her parents welcome house guests to their family's unhappy home on the edge of Johannesburg. For a while, for as long as the visitors are there, her mother and father will put their quarrels aside and be like a real family. One spring, a family of wanderers - an Australian couple and their two boys - comes to stay. But the arrival of these 'gypsies' starts a chain of events that will shatter Emily's hopes of a happy family life and change them all forever.

• Used

  Paperback
  2006

  $13.28

  In Johannesburg in the late 1960s, the Iris family take in house guests from time to time to diffuse the tension in their large but unhappy home. 11-year-old Emily looks forward to these guests as she knows her parents will set their quarrels aside, and, if only for a short time, be like a real family. One spring a family of wanderers - an Australian couple and their two boys, Streak and Otis, who is brain damaged - comes to stay. Emily and Streak form a close friendship and Emily's beloved, gentle older sister Sarah takes Otis in hand. But then tragedy strikes and their lives are changed forever. Enclosing all this is the incredibly close and warm relationship Emily has with the old Zulu gatekeeper, Buza, who tells her Zulu folktales to help her through and make sense of her problems.