Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2017.
From the jubilant “You shall go to the ball!” of the preface, and the “Once upon a time” opening, this glorious feminist-hued fable tells of a young woman’s transformation from domestic servant to liberated writer. Sunday, 30th March, 1924. It’s Mothering Sunday and, as is customary, book lover Jane Fairchild has been relieved of her housemaid’s duties. But (in true fairy tale fashion), Jane has no mother to visit, and instead jumps at the chance of enjoying an intimate liaison with her lover. Cue much delicious anticipation: “Her heart had soared. Feast your eyes. A story was beginning". By lunchtime, Jane is alone again, but she leaves her lover’s house feeling “a sudden unexpected freedom”. While tragic news is but a blink away, the disrupted chronology of this exquisitely written novel reveals the storyteller’s life that Jane later carves for herself, with only the tale of this momentous Mothering Sunday left untold to her readers.
With such an abundance of life, soul, sensuality and style packed into less than 150 pages, I can’t recommend this flawless, life-affirming nugget enough. ~ Joanne Owen
The Walter Scott Prize Judges said:
‘It is March 30, 1924. Mothering Sunday. The day that servants were allowed to return to their families. Jane Fairchild is a housemaid and orphan with no prospect of a visit home but she has a rendezvous, nevertheless. It is that encounter and its consequences that are described in this short novel by Graham Swift. Jane’s life will never be the same as she begins a journey from servitude to independence. It is a perfect and life-affirming novel.’
| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
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