From the outset, I was hooked by the book blurb: the story
of someone completely erased from a family’s history.
As someone who loves
genealogy research, I know from experience that whole life stories can be wiped
out or rewritten in a family. In the book, Esme reappears after a lifetime in an
institution, arriving in the life of her great niece, who was unaware she
existed.
I loved the interwoven timescales as the author seamlessly takes us
from the 1930s to the modern day. It is a beautifully written story of tangled lives
and huge emotional trauma. A story that stayed with me long after I’d finished
reading.
From the bestselling, critically acclaimed author of HAMNET and I AM, I AM, I AM, comes an intense, breathtakingly accomplished story of a woman's life stolen, and reclaimed.
'Unputdownable' Ali Smith
Edinburgh in the 1930s. The Lennox family is having trouble with its youngest daughter. Esme is outspoken, unconventional, and repeatedly embarrasses them in polite society. Something will have to be done.
Years later, a young woman named Iris Lockhart receives a letter informing her that she has a great-aunt in a psychiatric unit who is about to be released.
I was hooked by this book, which explores past
crimes that had been all but forgotten.
I found every opportunity to pick it up
and read a few more pages in my quest to find out the secret link between the present and the past. Part way through, I thought I’d guessed the twist, but it was
more complicated than I’d imagined.
As someone who writes and reads a lot of
psychological suspense, I was impressed by the way the story unfolded. It was
one of those books where I desperately want to know how it ends but also don’t
want it to finish.
Ethan Muller is struggling to establish his reputation as a dealer in the cut-throat world of contemporary art when he is alerted to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: in a decaying New York slum, an elderly tenant has disappeared, leaving behind a staggeringly large trove of original drawings and paintings. Nobody can tell Ethan much about the old man, except that he came and went in solitude for nearly forty years, his genius hidden and unacknowledged. Despite the fact that, strictly speaking, the artwork doesn't belong to him, Ethan takes the challenge and makes a name for the old man - and…
While I don’t usually read historic novels, I selected this
book because it was loosely based around a bizarre true event that happened in
1518, when women in Europe danced manically, not stopping to rest even when
their feet bled.
I was intrigued to find out how the author would spin this
into a novel. The story took me to places and times I knew nothing about, and
the world was so richly described I could imagine the events and the people in
their day-to-day lives witnessing these strange spectacles.
At its heart, a
tragic story which will touch many women who identify with aspects of the
story, from a bleak marriage, difficulty with conception, struggles with a patriarchal
society, and lost love.
Set in an era of superstition and hysteria, and inspired by the true events of a doomed summer, The Dance Tree is a story of family secrets, forbidden love, and women pushed to the edge. The gripping, historical novel from Kiran Millwood Hargrave, as seen on BBC Two's Between the Covers.
'Brilliant' - Marian Keyes
'I absolutely loved this book' - Elodie Harper, author of The Wolf Den
Set in an era of superstition and hysteria, and inspired by the true events of a doomed summer, The Dance Tree is a story of family secrets, forbidden love, and women pushed…
The police ruled it as misadventure. A young woman falling from a bridge onto Janice Thomason's car was not an act of suicide or murder, it's just an accident. But for Janice, it feels like fate has thrown them together.
As a genealogist, Janice is used to tracking down clues - is even a little obsessive, one might say... The police know so little about the Jane Doe that fell on her car that she decides to start her own investigation into the victim and the people she knew. Surely someone must be to blame?
Sometimes the only way to uncover the truth is to lie... and for Janice, living a lie comes all too easily.
