When her parents buy a tea room in the countryside, city girl April is all adrift, not least emotionally. Only 10 years of age and nonplussed by the adult dramas being played out around her, she finds solace of sorts in a crushingly close friendship - the type only young girls can have - with Ruby, the precocious girl next door.
As much a rite-of-passage novel as a superb evocation of a 1950s childhood, The Orchard On Fire is a carefully crafted collision of childhood innocence and adult guilt.
Why does the creepy old Mr Greenridge follow April around the village? Why is Ruby routinely beaten up by her brutal parents? It's like The Railway Children turning up in a David Lynch film.
What fascinates most is how the children interact with the adults, as both try to decode each other's use of language and imagery. Dark secrets are hinted at, mutual misunderstanding rules and sometimes adult experience is simply no match for childhood intuition.
April struggles to make sense of the eerie goings-on around her, but whom can she believe - her parents or her best friend? Has a murder really taken place or is it just a young girl's vivid imagination? And what have the communists got to do with it anyway?
The Edinburgh writer Shena Mackay surpassed herself with this novel. Written with humour and compassion, The Orchard On Fire is a beautifully sad read.
The Orchard on Fire is published by Vintage, £6.99 in UK
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/SJQTLMCMMRC2PLALXUKEWWS6HU.png)