Product Description

At the age of six, Mary Ward, the child of a poor farming family in Suffolk, has a revelation: she isn't Mary, she's a boy. So begins Mary's heroic struggle to change gender, while around her others also strive to find a place of safety and fulfilment in a savage and confusing world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2207 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Review
Although only six years old at the time, Mary Ward will never forget the two minutes silence held in honour of King George VI. For she has a revelation - a mistake has been made - she is not a girl at all - she is a boy and will grow up to be a man. So begins the soul-searching struggle to become Martin Ward from a wretchedly miserable childhood in rural East Anglia to Nashville, Tennessee, home of country music via Earl's Court. But this is more than the saga of a sex change, it is also the story of the fascinatingly disturbed eccentrics who are part of Mary's life - her family and friends. A highly original and complex novel, both profound and humorous. (Kirkus UK)

Daily Telegraph
‘A major book’

Spectator
‘Hypnotic…Curiously beautiful and strikingly original’

Customer Reviews

A great novel.
I loved this novel. I haven't read it recently so some of the details are fuzzy but I do remember being amazed by the story and the author's writing style.

"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.
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.
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.