Robin

Sarah Ann Jukes’s Robin is a quiet but lively winter tale, threaded through with magic, melancholy, and the steady, sustaining resilience of the natural world. Poised and emotionally attuned, it is a novel about listening as much as speaking: about finding a voice in the hush of fear and uncertainty, and discovering that love, like a forest, is sprawling, tangled, and rich with quiet enchantment.

The story centres on Eddie, a boy who has always been ‘good.’ Careful to the point of invisibility, he takes on the unspoken role of emotional caretaker as his family navigates the serious illness of his sister. Jukes writes with real sensitivity about the impact of illness on family life, capturing the silences that stretch between people, the feelings that go unvoiced, and the heavy pressure on children who try to make themselves smaller so as not to add to the burden. Eddie’s goodness is both his shield and his constraint, and the novel gently questions what it costs a child to be endlessly compliant.

When Eddie is sent to stay with his uncle while his sister prepares for an operation, the narrative slips into the margins of the everyday and into a forest thick with whispering trees, snow, and ancient secrets. Here the story acquires its subtle fantastical charge. Eddie meets Mari, a fierce, enigmatic monster-hunting warrior, and her companion, the Robin. Both are finely drawn figures who act as guides and reflections, helping Eddie to confront his own fears and to recognise his buried anger and grief. Their presence allows the novel to explore the idea that all emotions have value, and that being ‘good’ is not the same as being honest.

As a snowstorm gathers and Eddie begins to find his literal voice through singing in the school choir, Robin unfolds into a thoughtful meditation on memory, storytelling, and the healing possibilities of nature. The forest becomes a powerful metaphor for connection and continuity: trees linked by roots and shared soil echo the way people, histories, and stories are bound together across time. Jukes’s prose is beautifully controlled, evoking the bite of cold air and the muffled stillness of winter woods, while never losing sight of the warmth that emerges from friendship, music, and imagination.

Linde Faas’s illustrations further enrich the text, deepening its sense of wonder. Her ethereal textures and wintry palette mirror the novel’s mood, while her images of the forest and the small, radiant Robin bring a gentle luminosity to the page. Together, text and illustration create a contemplative, emotionally generous book that invites readers to linger, listen, and find their own voices in the quiet.