Powell, Sophie 1980-

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POWELL, Sophie 1980-

PERSONAL:

Born 1980, in London, England. Education: Cambridge University (degree in Classics); currently attending New York University.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. Agent—Faye Bender, Doris S. Michaels Literary Agency, 1841 Broadway, Suite #903, New York, NY 10023.

CAREER:

Writer and student.

WRITINGS:

The Mushroom Man, Putnam (New York, NY), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

Novelist Sophie Powell was born in England in 1980. She grew up in London and on a sheep farm in the Brecon Beacons in Wales, "where she often went mushroom picking with her grandmother, sister, and brother," according to a brief biography on the Penguin Putnam Web site. She spends as much time on the farm as possible, she remarked, helping with the lamb birthing, wool shearing, and the general upkeep of the farm. "Additionally, I am an expert dirty-pen-cleaning person, an expert gathering-and-directing-a-flock-of-sheep-on-an-ATV (farming motorbike)-with-a-sheep-dog person, and an expert injecting-ill-sheep-with-antibiotics person," she said in the biographical sketch. When not working on the farm, she is pursuing a degree in creative writing from New York University.

In The Mushroom Man, Powell's first book, widowed Beth invites her sister, Charlotte, and Charlotte's doted-upon daughter, Lily, to visit at her remote farmhouse in Wales. It's not an invitation that Charlotte is eager to accept. She considers Beth and her teenage son and identical triplet daughters to be little more than dirt-dwelling savages who are "very different people who live very differently from us," she tells her daughter. Charlotte still holds old resentments toward Beth, who she feels threw away all the advantages and education that their parents had worked so hard to give them when she married a carpenter and moved to Wales. Charlotte had refused to communicate with Beth for years after her marriage, even though Beth continued to write. When Beth's husband dies, however, Beth extends the invitation for the visit. With a sense of superiority and self-sacrifice, Charlotte concludes that it is her duty to visit her sister. Getting away from her own husband, a philanderer having an affair with the family's au pair, would be a welcome bonus. Six-year-old Lily is delighted at the prospect of visiting the farm, as she had begun feeling rebellious against a mother who never let her have any fun.

At first, the reunion (and first meeting of cousins) is a wonderful success. The sisters begin patching up their relationship, and Lily immediately forms a bond with Beth's eleven-year-old daughters, Amy, Jude, and Samantha. The city-born child is enchanted by the Welsh countryside. Amy, a creative, natural storyteller, entertains Lily with fanciful tales. One day she tells Lily about the Mushroom Man, an invisible hermit who lives in the trees and who keeps the fairies dry with his special mushroom umbrellas. Lily is enthralled by the idea of the Mushroom Man, and begins taking long walks and looking for the kindly sprite. One morning, Lily disappears into the forest without a trace, leaving Charlotte wild with terror and grief, regretting ever stepping out of her London home. The police are summoned, the adults comb the forest looking for the lost child, and all manner of grown-up methods are used to search for Lily and to calm Charlotte. The children, on the other hand, have a different plan to find their cousin, one that involves looking for previously unknown fairy worlds where the Mushroom Man might very well exist. A Publishers Weekly reviewer noted particularly the contrast between the grim and urgent reaction of the adults and the "more whimsical" plan of the children, who try to find Lily and placate the fairy world at the same time by marching through the woods declaring their belief in fairies.

Karen Karbo, writing in the New York Times, called The Mushroom Man "a respectable debut by a very young writer" and remarked that "the spirit of the book is infectious, and Powell has done a fine job of casting her spell. She has managed to create a world where the sad adult business of estrangement, mourning, and betrayal coexists with the unseen childhood world of light and happiness." Donna Seaman, writing in Booklist, observed that "first-time novelist Powell writes with remarkable assurance and dazzle," while a Publishers Weekly reviewer remarked on Powell's "wry, playful prose" as well as her "assured voice and unerring eye for detail." In a Romantic Times review, Sheri Melnick called the book "whimsical, yet grounded in reality." A Kirkus Reviews critic called The Mushroom Man "a charming and thought-provoking tale that walks the line between fantasy and reality with all the skill of a tightrope-artist."