Aren't We Sisters?

Aren't We Sisters? Synopsis

Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2015.

1933, and the world is still changing, even in a quiet corner of Cornwall...If there's one thing Lettie Quick believes in, it's contraception. Trained by 'the Madam', Marie Stopes herself, Lettie teaches married women about contraception. Her job is technically legal, but the things that the typed, unsigned letters that arrive at Lettie's office ask her to do certainly aren't.

Norah Thornby can't even utter the phrase 'family planning' without blushing. She still lives on the square in Silkhampton, but her mother's death and mounting debts have forced her to do the unthinkable and take on a lodger, one Lettie Quick. No-one is supposed to know it, but Rae Grainger is living in isolation in a large house by a lake.

Her glittering film career isn't finished, she's simply waiting a few more weeks until others - paid, professional others - resolve her problem, leaving her to forget the whole ghastly business.