The Sunlight Pilgrims: A Novel

Sounded so interesting. Great promise..location...situation..characters...but it really was just about a group of unusual people coping with minor adversity. Life went on as usual even at -49 degrees living in a small tin box. I could not feel the cold. I could not feel the oncoming disaster. In short, it did not make me feel anything but perhaps, impatient.

I was a little frustrated with this book. I kept thinking there should be more to it. I liked the idea of the world freezing and the challenges the people had to face. But most of the book was pages and pages of thoughts of a 12 year old girl who had been a boy. Some of her perspective was interesting but most was pretty mundane. The other main character was Dylan who was from London and came up here to live in a caravan he inherited from his mother who had just died. There were pages and pages of every insignificant thought he had. However, when something happened, like Stella going to the hospital, the author chose to just have Stella mention that she called emergency and was taken to the hospital. The next pages takes up the story later never showing the reader what happened at the hospital.I found it really frustrating. I skipped about 30 pages in the middle and didn't miss a thing. The author is a good writer and the book is unique. She is just not a great story teller. It's also hard to enjoy a story when you don't like the characters. I couldn't relate any of them.

not only is the story interesting and unique, but the characters are SO real - they are people i would meet in my everyday life (as a millennial) - as are their inner monologues and descriptions of their feelings

Feels like a novel that was rushed. There were a couple of points where it felt like chapters had been pulled out, and the ending was lackluster. I expected more things happening, and maybe a little more resolution.

I would say read or listen to the excerpt before purchasing. Something about the reading on the audiobook was unpleasant to listen to.

I really loved it so much and then it just ... ended. I feel as though the author lost her way with the characters or the story and just quit while she was ahead. Fascinating and gripping and then whoop, all gone!

Excellent storytelling. I was riveted. Spoiler - the ending leaves you wondering. (Just the way I like it!)

Interesting take on the coming ice age.

The Sunlight Pilgrims is a beautiful and insightful novel.Set in the winter of 2020/21 - the most extreme winter for 200 years, it tells the story of Constance, her daughter Stella and their neighbours Dylan.Constance is a resourceful and intelligent woman - well-known in the area for having two lovers - and for not giving a hoot what anyone thinks of her for it.Stella is a transgender girl struggling with all the usual teenage issues, hugely compounded by the onset of her male puberty. Her determination to be accepted as her true self, and her frustration at everything having to be a battle is a central theme.Dylan is grieving for his mother and grandmother who both recently died. The arthouse cinema the family ran together has gone to the wall, and so he winds up at the caravan park at the edge of the world where Constance and Stella live.As winter's grip increases on the land, the weather almost becomes a character in its own right; the plummeting temperature, the drifts of snow and huge icicles all contribute to an increasingly claustrophobic and every setting.It's a delightful story, sensitively told - it may be early in the year, but I know this will be one of my favourite reads of 2018. Any book that gets you Googling meteorological phenomena has got to be winner.

I found Jenni’s name on a list of ten good contemporary Scottish authors and loved the sound of the title. I’m interested in pilgrimages, as those who read my other blog might know ~ and also allegories.I’m happy to say that Sunlight Pilgrims drew me in from the start. I had no expectations of the book before I began to read it on Kindle. You must admit that Kindle can be a sterile way to be introduced to a book you know little about but I plunged in.~ The world is freezing over. Rumours are spreading of an apocalypse. Temperatures in the world are plunging lower than any know records. Is it heading for another Ice Age? A massive iceberg is heading for the coast of Scotland as recently bereaved Dylan heads to his late mother’s caravan for a Highland retreat and to spread the ashes of his mother and grandmother.This novel is spellbinding in its description of the changing climate. The unusual mix of characters are struggling to stay alive, but alongside this 2020 vision is an intimate internal struggle of families and individuals facing prejudice, dark family secrets, complex love triangles alongside the impossible attempt to stay warm in a small caravan park as temperatures plummet. There are many magic moments but also tense heart breaking times too.As I said I had no preconceived ideas as to what this novel was about, but it has continued to haunt me for days after I reached the 100% on my kindle and I can highly recommend it.

The second book I have read by Jenni Fagan and I've loved both. Her characters are both modern yet familiar and I love her ability to create relationships that feel recognisable to me. By basing stories just a short way into the future she is not restricted by laws or modern etIquette, yet the setting and characters have lived through the same history as the rest of us.

Read this for my book club. We all really enjoyed it and it made for very interesting discussions. It's a very unusual type of apocalyptic story, focusing around the inhabitants of a caravan park, all very poor but looking out for each other as the end of the world slowly rolls in with the snow.

Very badly written