The Year the Gypsies Came - Linzi Glass

"In the spring of 1966, there was no one living with us, and the tension between my parents was left to grow like untended weeds. It was then that the gypsies came."
"They came to us that spring and cast a spell over us. They changed our lives forever.
Emily Iris looks forward to the times her parents welcome house guests to their family's unhappy home on the edge of Johannesbur. For a while, for as long as the visitors are there, her father and mother will put their quarrels aside and be like a real family.
One spring, a family of wanderers- an Australian couple and their two boys- come to stay. But the arrival of these "gypsies" starts a chain of events that will shatter Emily's hopes of a happy family life and change them all forever.

Emily is a twelve year old tomboy, living with her perfect older sister Sarah, her self-obssessed mother and her distracted father. She enjoys a close relationship with Sarah, and the pair are kind and loving towards one another in the face of discord between their dysfunctional parents.
Their father, Bob, invites a family of Australian travellers to stay, a family every bit as, if not more dysfunctional than themselves. Emily befriends the younger son, Streak, whilst Sarah helps Otis, a backward teenage boy. The result is tragedy.
This book is classified as young people's fiction, yet the pervasive and underlying horror makes it disconcerting for even adult readers. Despite, or maybe because of this, I absolutely adored it.
Set in South Africa in a time when aparteid was still the norm, Linzi Glass paints a picture of a lonely child on the brink of adolesence.
Emily's relationship with Buza, their Zulu night watchman, lends a flavour of the setting to the novel, as he tells her African folk tales. Buza is Emily's confidant and surrogate parent, and the relationship between the two, makes for emotional and beautiful reading.
The gypsies themselves are a lot more difficult to like. Streak and Otis have never been to school, much to Streak's dismay, and he envies Emily her lifestyle. There is something increasingly menacing about Jock, the boys' father. Streak begins to confide in Emily about what goes on behind the closed doors of their trailer, and Peg, their mother provides an inkling as to what is wrong with Otis.
I wouldn't like to give away too much of the plot, I can only say that I found myself weeping uncontrollably by the end, and thought about this book and it's rich characters long after I finished it.