The Oracles tells the story of the small community of East Head, somewhere off the Bristol channel, and the chain of peculiar events that are visited upon its inhabitants in the wake of a large storm. The storm came on a Saturday night, returning on the Sunday, causing damage to the power station and extinguishing lights all over the small town. The ferocity of the storm caused fright and unease among the people of the town, bringing back memories of the air raids during the war. The only damage was to an old tree in the middle of a field behind the town.

The tree was the playground of a group of neglected children – the children of artist Conrad Swann and his girlfriend Elizabeth – five children, two families brought together in what the locals consider scandalous circumstances. Here the children built dens among the branches, hid themselves from the strange forms that Conrad created, made believe and fought the demons of their fertile imaginations that they called the ‘artifaxes’. Serafina is the eldest and has tried to be the little mother to them all – but it’s all getting too much for a child of ten. An old garden chair that the children had used to mount the tree, was twisted into a strange and unrecognisable shape by the lightning strikes, and when the children unknowingly move the strange object to the shed where Conrad had previously stored his much-awaited new sculpture, the stage is set for all kinds of misunderstanding and artistic snobbery.

A young local couple’s marriage is at the heart of the story, Dickie married pretty Christine two years earlier, and they now have an infant son. Dickie has recently become an admirer of artist Conrad Swann, and has even received an invitation to his much talked about party. Christine’s concerns are different to Dickie’s she rather enjoys gathering in the town Pavilion for tea and gossip, her horizons are smaller. Dickie has begun to find her conversation rather limited and has to stop himself from wincing whenever she calls the sitting room, the lounge (nothing wrong with lounge!). Their young marriage is put under severe strain when they find themselves on opposite sides of an artistic wrangle, not really helped when Dickie accuses Christine of being provincial. Christina is hurt, but she isn’t faultless either. Her friend the vicar’s wife tries to talk to her honestly but Christina isn’t quite ready to hear it.

“ ‘You never seem to grow up. You’re still the same complacent little thing you were in High school. It quite shocks me to hear the way you order Dickie about. No wonder he snaps! I don’t want to be disagreeable. But I do think you’re making a terrible mistake. When people marry they… they both change a little, and grow up together, and help each other to face life. But they must be ready to alter their points of view to suit each other. A married couple… they aren’t just two people. They can be one person, in a sort of way; a kinder, wiser person than either of them could have been alone, because two people’s experience has been put in to it…’ ”

The Oracles of the title are a group of provincial art appreciators and intellectuals who pounce upon the former chair, mistaking it for a piece of modern art by Conrad Swann, and set about bullying their fellow townspeople into buying it for the town with public money. The group are led by Mrs Rawson – who is terribly blind in her artistic snobbery.

Meanwhile Conrad goes missing as people gather for a party at his house, on the Sunday evening of the storm. One of the guests is Elizabeth’s husband – Conrad’s best friend and art dealer Frank Archer. It is perhaps surprising that Frank Archer is one of the most level headed, measured characters in the book. It is perhaps less surprising that several of the characters are really quite unlikeable. However, as I have said before – I do rather like, an unlikeable character.

With Conrad nowhere to be found, and without a thought for anyone else, particularly her children, Elizabeth decides to take herself off to London, leaving a bit of money in a drawer for Seraphina. The abandoned children are happy enough to start with – but it isn’t long before they begin to long for someone to come, someone who will look after them, they are hungry and dirty and all alone. Seraphina is eventually forced to take action – if only the grownups arguing and posturing over a piece of art can be made to stop long enough to hear her cries.

“she had little trust in grown-up people but she still retained some crumbs of faith in certain natural laws. Children, so she believed, were never left alone, quite alone, in a house. She had never heard of that happening. There was always some older person, of very little use perhaps, but a symbol of responsibility. Orphans were put into orphanages because it was impossible that children should be in a house alone. Conrad had gone. Elizabeth was going. Somebody, therefore, was bound to come.”

It is the plight of the children – for whom, naturally we feel for most, the lack of care and concern by Elizabeth and Conrad is horrifying – and they never really answer for it either. The story of a piece of old storm damaged debris being mistaken for modern art is one that should be quite funny – but Kennedy makes this a much more complex story than that. One which shows us that she really understands how people work, and how small communities can operate.

The Oracles was an excellent read, a slightly unusual story perhaps, suffused with tension, it’s one I thoroughly enjoyed. ( )

Margaret Kennedy’s twelfth novel is dark and clever.

It is set in a small town close to the Bristol Channel, not long after the war; and it spins around the family of a Bohemian artist, a more conventional young married couple with a new baby, a number of their friends and neighbours, and its catalyst is a remarkable work of art.

The story begins as an apocalyptic thunderstorm rages over the town. The residents, horribly reminded of wartime bombings, huddle in their houses; but when they look outside only one thing has changed. A huge tree near the home of abstract sculptor Conrad Swann has been struck by lightning and is split in two.

When his wife died, leaving him with three young children, the sculptor had ran away from London to the country with the wife of his agent and his oldest friend, Frank Archer. Elizabeth, the mother of twins who came along with her, had been an actress, but her beauty was faded and she was drawn to of alcohol and idleness. Ten year-old Serafina Swann was left to manage the house and the four younger children as best she could. Serafina was bright, she did her best, but the the family’s new home was beginning to decay.

The tree had been the children’s refuge, where they hid from their fathers work, which they saw as malevolent ‘artifaxes’. Imagine their horror when they saw that it had been struck, and that in his branches was a horrible new creation. Serafina took charge, hauling the strange form of distorted arms and legs and hiding it in the shed, pushing a new work of her father’s that was to be collected for an exhibition well out of the way.

Only Joe, the youngest of the children realised what it was – the remains of the chair they had used to climb into the tree – but when he shouted at it nobody seemed to be listening.

Meanwhile, Christina Pattison was happy with her new home, her new baby, and her role as the perfect housewife. She was only a little worried that her husband Dickie might feel a little left out, might be a little less than happy. She was right. Dickie hadn’t really wanted to come back to his home town after the war, but his mother had died and so he felt that he had to, for the sake of his elderly father.

Dickie, eager for new experiences and new friends, was glad to accept an invitation to a party to celebrate the completion of Conrad Swann’s latest work. Christina was reluctant. She clung to convention, she worried about the children in that most unconventional of households, and she had no taste for modern art. Dickie went to the party alone, and rolled home the next morning with a hideous hangover.

Conrad Swann had disappeared. It was said that he was going to Mexico, but Frank Archer, who had come to face his friend for the first time since he absconded, pointed out that he didn’t have the means to get very far from home at all. He was right, but that’s another story. Elizabeth wept and wailed, and Frank enlisted Dickie to keep the party going, with the help of a crate of brandy that he found in the kitchen. The supposed next artwork – actually the children’s artefax – was unveiled, and the company was astounded by the sculptor’s radical new direction.

Martha Rawson, Swann’s would be patron is eager to celebrate and promote the wonderful new work. Architect, Alan Wetherby, who bought an earlier work in unconvinced, and eventually he will uncover the truth.

While that is happening Elizabeth abandons her household, Conrad finds a new life in the country, Serafina struggles to look after herself and the younger children, and – as sides are drawn in the dispute over the new artwork – the Christina becomes more conventional and Dickie more determined to explore new possibilities.

The satire is lovely – and I was pleased that Margaret Kennedy was satirising the people rather than the art – and there is much more here to appreciate.

The plot is cleverly and elaborately constructed, and the outcomes are unexpected.

Margaret Kennedy draw her characters so well, and she is at her most clear-sighted in this book. Some are lightly sketched, others are drawn with much more detail, but all are real fallible human beings. That made it easier for me than I expected to believe this rather improbable story.

The portraits of Christina and Dickie as their marriage reached crisis point, and Christina finally realised that she had to learn to change and make compromises, was wonderful.

Serafina Swann, who was thrilled when a lady at church described her as ‘a little mother’, who had to cope somehow when the adults abandoned the children of her family, who was so worried when she thought that her next home might not have enough books, was a marvellous creation, and one my favourite Margaret Kennedy characters. I should love to spend a little more time with her, and know rather more about her future.

My disappointment with this book was that it spent a little too much time with the characters I couldn’t care for and focused a little too much on the weaknesses of the characters I liked. That meant that I couldn’t feel quite as engaged with this book as I did with many of Margaret Kennedy’s other works.

I was disappointed that neither Conrad nor Elizabeth were ever held to account for abandoning their children.

The way that the story played out made me realise why much of that had to be though.

And when I look back at this book as a whole, I realise that I found much to love and much to admire. ( )