![]() Both parents were intellectuals and progressive educators, but were stingy not only with money but also with warmth and attention. The sisters often went hungry, and for years were banished to sleep in an unheated lean-to shed, to make room in case of visitors. Jones wrote from experience: her parents were neglectful of her needs, and those of her two younger sisters. ![]() The child protagonist would realise this, but get on with the adventure anyway. Rather than a deliberately cruel stepmother, a Jones protagonist might have a real mother far more wrapped up in her own career than in the discoveries and feelings of her child. Though avoiding criminally dysfunctional families or unwanted pregnancies, her cleverly plotted and amusing adventures deal frankly with emotional clumsiness, parental neglect, jealousy between siblings and a general sense of being an outcast. Jones's fiction is relevant, subversive, witty and highly enjoyable, while also having a distinctly dark streak and a constant awareness of how unreliable the real world can seem. ![]()
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