The Patchwork People

by Louise Lawrence

In Wales, in the not-too-distant future, fifteen-year-old Helena, bored with her privileged life, falls for Hugh, a boy struggling to break the cycle of poverty, but the two are separated by a rigid social caste, until they meet the patchwork people.

Genres: Dystopia

230 pages, Hardcover

First published May 19, 1994

About the author

Elizabeth Holden, better known by her pen name Louise Lawrence, is an English science fiction author, acclaimed during the 1970s and 1980s.

Lawrence was born in Leatherhead, Surrey, England, in 1943. She became fascinated with Wales at a young age, and has set many of her novels there. She left school early on to become an assistant librarian. She married and had the first of her three children in 1963. Her departure from the library, she recalls, gave her the potential to turn toward writing: "Deprived of book-filled surroundings, I was bound to write my own."

Reviews

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I must have had this book on my book shelf for years when I was a kid before I eventually read it at about 13/14. But once I read it I fell in love with it...Can you fall in love with a book? I think so I've fallen in love with many books. Set in Wales in a mining town it highlights the economic gap between rich and poor. A love story between Hugh and out of work young man and Helena a young woman who's father is management on one of the many mines. They meet in the aftermath of a riot which left Helena scared, shaken and disorientated in a change room of a clothing store. Now I'm very scared of giving away the ending so I'm going to stop here. But suffice it to say that this book has stayed with me..especially after reading The Black Diamonds-about a mining family in Yorkshire and all the inequalities that were faced by the poverty stricken miners...it appeared that not much had changed. The poor were still the poor and the rich were still the rich.

But social inequalities aside, this is a wonderful read.

[Christina · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved Lawrence's novel The Earth Witch, so I decided to check out some of her other work. As I love Wales and love Dystopian novels, I thought I would adore The Patchwork People. Unfortunately, it was extremely heavy-handed and preachy, and none of the characters were particularly likable or even believable. They were as flat and one-dimensional as the rest of the novel.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was one of those books that you're like, can this have a good ending? But of course, they always pull though. Nice story.