Synopsis:

Not far from London, there is a village.

This village belongs to the people who live in it and to those who lived in it hundreds of years ago. It belongs to England’s mysterious past and its confounding present. It belongs to families dead for generations, and to those who have only recently moved here, such as the boy Lanny, and his mum and dad.

But it also belongs to Dead Papa Toothwort, who has woken from his slumber in the woods. Dead Papa Toothwort, who is listening to them all.

Review:

In a village not far from London live Lanny and his parents. A fee-spirited child, he roams the woods nearby and has art lessons with local eccentric artist Pete. His father commutes to London daily, mildly annoyed with Lanny’s antics, while his mother, a former actress, spends her time writing a crime novel.

That is, essentially the plot. However, the reality is not quite so simple.

I read this book in November 2025 on the recommendation of two different friends, and I still struggle to find the words to describe it. I think the brilliance of Lanny comes in large part from going in blind and letting the story unfold itself before you in its unique way. It’s not so much a narrative as it is an amalgamation of poetry and prose, the writing jumbling about and falling off the page in places, and it’s best to let it carry you along where it goes.

The book is mostly about Lanny, but it’s never from his point of view. It’s also about life in rural England, about the ‘otherhing’ of those who seem different and about how childlike wonder can still exist in a corporate world.

We get to know Lanny through other eyes, and people have many opinions about him. One such PoV is Dead Papa Toothwort, a Green Man type entity who becomes obsessed with Lanny. I could never work out if he was real, or part of Lanny’s imagination, but he crept through the whole book, lending a surreal edge to an otherwise simple story about a family in a small village.

It’s definitely a novel I want to revisit, as I believe I will get much more from it a second time round. It’s inventive, strange and quite magical.