She makes detours along the way - footnotes she calls them - to explain the history behind the story, starting from the moment at the end of the nineteenth century when a travelling French photographer captured Alice, Ruby's great-grandmother, and her children. It's Ruby who narrates the story of the Lennox family, starting with the moment of her conception and through into her adult life. Bunty's not much of a mother either and spends most of the time wishing that the children were elsewhere and that she was anywhere but the flat above the pet shop in the shadow of York Minster. On the night that Ruby is born he's in a pub in Doncaster explaining to a lady in an emerald dress and a D-cup that he's not married.
George isn't a lot of help - quite the reverse, in fact. By the night that Ruby is conceived (rather grudgingly, on her part, it has to be said) she already has two children, the sensible but rather-distant Patricia and unpredictable and difficult Gillian. It's a book to buy and keep as it will deserve a second reading.īunty Lennox had never wanted to marry George but after the war he was all that was left. It's a novel to settle into or it's difficult to grasp who's who, but it repays the effort handsomely. Summary: A confident and exuberant first novel charts the progress of a family though war and peace.
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