Ratings5
Average rating4.2
'A wonderful debut. Actually, a tour de force' -- Sarah Winman, Author of Still Life 'Utterly captivating... Written with great heart, humour and humanity, it's the kind of book you want to escape normal life to read at every available opportunity.' -- Elizabeth Day, author of Magpie 'This is a book that will be loved unreasonably and life-long, I believe, like I Capture The Castle.' -- Francis Spufford, author of 'Light Perpetual' 'Maudie, why are all the best characters men?' Maudie closes the book with a clllump. 'We haven't read all the books yet, Miss Cristabel. I can't believe that every story is the same' Cristabel Seagrave has always wanted her life to be a story, but there are no girls in the books in her dusty family library. For an unwanted orphan who grows into an unmarriageable young woman, there is no place at all for her in a traditional English manor. But from the day that a whale washes up on the beach at the Chilcombe estate in Dorset, and twelve-year-old Cristabel plants her flag and claims it as her own, she is determined to do things differently. With her step-parents blithely distracted by their endless party guests, Cristabel and her siblings, Flossie and Digby, scratch together an education from the plays they read in their freezing attic, drunken conversations eavesdropped through oak-panelled doors, and the esoteric lessons of Maudie their maid. But as the children grow to adulthood and war approaches, jolting their lives on to very different tracks, it becomes clear that the roles they are expected to play are no longer those they want. As they find themselves drawn into the conflict, they must each find a way to write their own story...
Reviews with the most likes.
My favourite read of the year so far, with only 32 days left of the year I doubt it will be bettered.
Gorgeously written but I do not recommend unless you feel like sobbing uncontrollably through the last 100 or so pages. This is why I do not read WWII books, important though it may be to recall the absolute horrors of this war. Quinn sugarcoats nothing yet still manages to infuse the whole story with a lightness that is hard to describe. The first half dragged a bit, 4.5.