"Crossing Over" by Ann Morgan

 An old lady struggling with vascular dementia encounters an economic migrant sleeping in the barn of her old farm house. She mistakes him for someone from years ago when she was confronted with a 'Whistle Down the Wind' situation.

It is written in the present tense from the alternating points of view of old Edie, formidable and furiously combative to prevent the neighbours learning her secrets, and young Jonah. Both narratives include flashbacks to fascinating back stories: Edie remembers the second world war and 'Michael', a previous uninvited guest; Jonah the famine in Malawi that forced him to travel to England.  

The dementia aspect of the story reminded me of Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey but here it is shown within her sometimes chaotic interior monologue in which she repeats herself, confuses chronology, sometimes thinking she is a little girl again, sometimes living in the past, and searches for words or substitutes other words for them, such as "internet" for "innocent". Edie's chapter headings are muddled and the numbers grow increasingly chaotic as she deteriorates ( asimilar device is used in Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog  in the Night-time in which the narration is by a young lad with Asperger Syndrome and the chapter headings are prime numbers). I think this way of showing Edie's confusion worked very well.

The migrant hiding indoors while just outside is a building site full of potential betrayers reminded me at first of my scenario for my novel The Kids of God except that the consequences of discovery are less serious. Jonah's chapter headings get more ordered with time, as he copes better and better with the confusing culture-clash of English life (not to mention the necessary subterfuge in which he is forced to become Edith's carer). To start with his has many difficulties, from confusing consonantal sounds (he thinks Edie is called 'ET') and his bewilderment when shopping to being completely at sea when confronted with English idioms such as "they don't let the grass grow"- I loved the idea that Jonah thinks the word "wireless" in Edie's diary is anachronistically modern. I wasn't sure if Jonah rang quite true, given that he had spent two years journeying from Malawi including traversing the Libyan civil war and crossing at least two European countries before reaching England; I would have thought he had learned more on this odyssey. The refugee journey was, I think, better told in The Bee Keeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri.

A perfectly paced story which kept you guessing until the last few pages with a clever and unusual narration.

Selected quotes:

• "The night sky is peaceful, the stars glistening, but that means nothing. He has seen beauty birth ugliness too many times to be taken in." (Unnumbered prologue) I live that phrase "beauty birth ugliness"!
• "He is too knotted with need to care." (Unnumbered prologue)
• "Fluttering in the rafters flaps into stillness." (Unnumbered prologue)
• "The cupboards not stuffed with cuttings and letters are crammed with stacks of painted boxes, porcelain pots and glass jars ... many of them empty, as though the main business of the house is to store pockets of air." ('Two' - the 2nd Two)
• "He cries long and loud ... for the being forced to look his fellow beings in the face and make over and over the same unforgivable choice: my survival matters more than yours." ('One' - the 2nd One)
• "The sighing business of darkness, that first sweet, searing time." ('Beep')
• "So they are gone then. ... Reduced to nothing. Burnt up like maize shoots under the sun. Leaving the landscape of his heart bare." ('13')
• "She has unpacked life to the bottom of the box and knows there is nothing there." ('Many')

March 2025; 266 pages

Published by Renard Press in 2023.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God