WRITERS REVIEW PUBLISHING marks its first birthday

 

Great reissues and new fiction - more on the way this year!

Our new venture, an author publishing collaborative, launched last April with titles by Judith Allnatt, Mary Hoffman and Linda Newbery. Since then we've announced the publication of Sheena Wilkinson's Miss McVey Takes Charge and most recently Dennis Hamley's intriguing Spirit of the Place. 

We're very proud of our small but excellent list, which will soon see the addition of a sixth title: Sue Purkiss's first novel for adults, An Ordinary War, based on her father's experiences as prisoner of war in Poland. Christina Hardyment plans to join us with her next Alyce Chaucer mystery novel, and Linda Newbery's The Hide will appear in October. 

Coming soon on the blog - a piece by Dennis on the inspirations behind Spirit of the Place.

Find out more about our authors and their books on our website. 

See also:

Q&A with Judith Allnatt about The Poet's Wife

Q&A with Mary Hoffman about David: the Unauthorised Autogiography

Q&A with Linda Newbery about The One True Thing

Q&A with Sheena Wilkinson about Miss McVey Takes Charge

BOOKS OF THE YEAR Part 1 - chosen by our contributors

 

This is the first of three round-ups by our reviewers. Each has chosen their own best read of the year (or one of them) which did not necessarily have to be published during 2025. It's also our chance to thank our wonderful contributors for supporting us throughout the year - we couldn't possibly do this without you. Thank you all!

Susan Elkin chooses Orbital by Samantha Harvey: Nothing I’ve read this year quite surpasses this 2023 novel. The setting is the International Space Station which orbits Earth sixteen times a day. That means a continuously unfolding display of Earthly sunrises and sunsets, 250 miles below. Two Russians, one American, one Brit, one Japanese and one Italian maintain the vehicle internally and externally, servicing lab mice and plants, obeying a strict exercise routine to prevent muscle loss. Each is instructed by ground crew and there’s email contact with home. “Swimming” round the capsule, they hook themselves into hanging sleeping bags at night like bats.

Meanwhile the profound beauty and wonder rotates beneath them. Orbital is a heartfelt hymn of praise to the glory and wonder of our richly coloured planet and a timely reminder that national boundaries and all the hostility they cause are irrelevant. Succinct, poetic, philosophical and breath-taking, Orbital is a veritable Everest (visible from the ISS, apparently) of imaginative writing.

Susan Elkin's latest publication is a short story collection, Unheard Voices: Tales from the Margins of Literature

Lizzie Enfield chooses Purge by Sofi Oksanen: As a travel writer and novelist, I always seek out fiction set in the places I visit. Novels reveal the emotional texture of a landscape and the hidden histories of those who live there in a way guidebooks cannot. When I travelled to Estonia for the first time this year, Sofi Oksanen’s Purge offered a powerful introduction to a country with a scarred yet optimistic spirit. The novel intertwines the lives of two women - Aliide, an elderly survivor of Soviet oppression, and Zara, a young victim of modern trafficking - whose fates converge amid a legacy of fear, shame and endurance. Oksanen’s taut, lyrical prose captures both the brutality of history and the fragile strength of those who endure it. Reading Purge while exploring Tallinn and its countryside lent every ruined farmhouse and quiet forest a deeper resonance. It’s a haunting, unforgettable story of survival, memory and the resilience of the human spirit - both painful and positive. 

Lizzie Enfield is the author of Living With It. She has also written these BBC articles about Estonia.

Sheena Wilkinson's choice is By Any Other Name, by Jodi Picoult: We’ve all heard the theories that William Shakespeare may not have written all the plays attributed to him. I never wanted to believe this: the myth of the Bard’s humble beginnings and preternatural understanding of human experience at its deepest and widest was so romantic. But I have been entirely convinced by the thesis underpinning Jodi Picoult’s novel By Any Other Name. Building on compelling evidence that some of the plays could have been written by Emilia Bassano, an educated Italian Jew who, at thirteen, was given to the Lord Chamberlain as his mistress, Picoult fictionalises Emilia’s eventful life, setting it in counterpoint to that of a modern-day woman playwright: times have changed, but women still struggle to have their voices heard as loudly as men’s.

Bold, readable, wearing its considerable research lightly, By Any Other Name turned what I thought I knew on its head.

Sheena Wilkinson's latest publication is Miss McVey Takes Charge.  

From Lesley Glaister: I adore eccentric characters and the eponymous narrator of Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker, is exactly that. Monstrously selfish, devasted by her twin sister’s chance of happiness in marriage, which she tries to sabotage, she’s melodramatic, pedantic, impatient, witty, really a terrible person, and one of the most engaging and enraging narrators I’ve read for a long time. This claustrophobic novel is darkly funny and shocking in parts. I loved it! Much gentler is an audiobook that kept me spellbound: The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese. This family saga set in Sri Lanka, spans the first 77 years of the twentieth century. I found it deeply moving, almost unbearably sad, and with an intriguing theme of medical discovery. A quick round-up of other favourite reads this year: The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller; Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst, Liars and Saints by Maile Meloy and Clever Girl by Tessa Hadley.

Lesley Glaister's latest publication is A Particular Man.

Cindy Jefferies' choice is The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn: This novel embraced me, as if I were another child living in that gently crumbling house. I eavesdropped on the adults, listened to stories and was part of the close knit group of children, whose lives were a mystery to their parents. There is a melancholy in being ignored one moment and admonished the next. But childhood is not where this novel ends. Once the dead whale is found, its bones eventually turned into an outdoor theatre, Cristabel, who found it, also finds purpose for herself and the others.

Time moves on while plays are written, costumes made and props obtained. Adults attend, years pass and war comes.

I wouldn’t have missed reading this book for anything. If the hallmark of a good book is that the characters live on after the last page is turned…then this is certainly it!

Cindy Jefferies' latest publication is The Honourable Life of Thomas Cheyne.   

Laura Parker chooses Clear by Carys Davies: If you can read a book in one evening, it’s either very short, or very good. Clear is both. It feels timeless, even though it is set in a specific era and in a very particular place. Its historic backdrop is the Scottish Clearances and the formation of the Free Church of Scotland, but, much more urgently, it is about two men on an island: Ivar, who lives in isolation, and John, who is sent to evict him. From the moment Ivar finds John unconscious on the beach, the story moves at a fine pace, yet still manages to be a slow drama of two people getting to know each other and revealing our basic human needs: survival, trust, and love. It deals with several moral dilemmas, and right up to the end, it is impossible to predict what is going to happen. Profound, and deeply satisfying.

Laura Parker's current project has the working title Drystone Country.

Sue Purkiss recommends The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese: a richly textured family saga set in what is now Kerala. It begins with a young girl who is sent to marry a much older man, a widower. Surprisingly, the two gradually come to love each other, and they are at the heart of their small village, Parambil, as it grows and thrives.

Meanwhile, a parallel story tells of a talented young Scottish surgeon, who comes to India to work. His promising career is blighted by a tragic accident. It’s not evident for some time how these stories will link, but eventually they do.

It’s a long book, full of drama and with its fair share of tragedy. And yet it’s also full of warmth and humour – and hope. I found it to be a riveting read – the sort of book you really don’t want to end.

Sue Purkiss runs two blogs: A Fool on a Hill, her book reviews, and Let's Write! with ideas for creative writing.

Catherine Butler chooses 100 Tales from the Tokyo Ghost Café by Julian Sedgwick and Chie Kutsuwada: In 2021, Julian Sedgwick and Chie Kutsuwada published Tsunami Girl, a novel about a quarter-Japanese English girl, Yuki surviving the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami and coming to terms with its aftermath. Tsunami Girl, which was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, was formally audacious, switching between a conventional novel (written by Sedgwick) and a manga (authored by Kutsuwada). Its hybrid telling, reflecting Yuki’s own cultural hybridity, worked unexpectedly well.

Two years later, the same pair produced 100 Tales from the Tokyo Ghost Café. This book plays even more radically with form. Sedgwick and Kutsuwada are not only authors but characters in the story, shepherding a stray child (who may or may not be a ghost) from a yokai-haunted café in Tokyo to his home in Aomori Prefecture, and encountering many creatures and stories (some traditional, some brand new) in the process – including a brief encounter with Yuki from Tsunami Girl. If you enjoy Lafcadio Hearn’s tales of Japan’s spirit world, or a cleverly told story of any sort, I highly recommend this one.

Catherine Butler is Professor of English Literature at Cardiff University. Her latest publication is British Children's Literature in Japanese Culture.

Chosen by Yvonne Coppard: Kent Haruf's The Tie that Binds. Haruf never sets out to shock or mystify: his writing is so beautiful there is no need for tricks of the trade. Instead, the reader is folded into his story-telling arms and gently immersed in the sleepy rural town of Holt, Colorado, where the intertwining tale of ordinary folk in extraordinary situations gradually unfolds. It is April, 1977. Edith Goodnough, 80 years old, lies in a hospital bed under police guard. She has lived an apparently drab, quiet life on a farm on the outskirts of town. But Edith is about to face trial on a charge of murder. Her life, and her family’s, will be laid bare.

If you like this, move on to Haruf’s trilogy: Plainsong, Eventide and Benediction. They are all perfect reads to turn to after a run of spooks, spies, thrillers and impenetrable award winners.

Yvonne Coppard has retired from a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship and is now working towards becoming a Lady who Lunches.

Chosen by Miriam Halahmy: The Painter's Daughters by Emily Howe. A 2025 debut novel about the daughters of the 18th century painter, Thomas Gainsborough, this book won the Mslexia prize for unpublished novels. It is always difficult to bring alive great art in fiction. Not every author can achieve it. But Emily Howe has given us a deep and satisfying window into this great artist, as well detailed descriptions of everyday life at the time. It’s a smorgasbord of colour, smell, light, people and landscape.

But this is not the main focus of the story. Peggy, Gainsborough's youngest daughter, lives in fear that sister Molly’s mental health affliction with be discovered. It blights their lives from childhood. When the family moves to Bath and the girls enter society, things get worse. This is a family coping in silence with a stricken child, while the artist struggles to keep his patrons on side. A story of family life in all its complexities, deep sisterly love and severe illness without medical support. I thoroughly recommend it.

Miriam Halahmy's latest title is Pomegranates for Peace, published in November.

And finally for this first batch, Celia Rees picks Vianne, by Joanne Harris, the prequel to Chocolat. Vianne is a young woman, barely out of her teens. She is pregnant and alone, after recently losing her mother. She finds herself in Marseille, a city she doesn’t know. She is broke and finds work in a bistrot, even though she can’t cook. The people she meets and recipes they share teach her more than cookery. Vianne learns to love food and through the Provençal dishes she prepares in the bistrot and the chocolates she learns to make, she discovers how to love people because food is made to share. Food is on nearly every page and is described so vividly one longs to share it, whether the salty pungency of pissaladière, or the delicacy of a rose fondant. There is also a sprinkle of magic, as there is in Chocolat, as tantalising and mysterious as my favourite ingredient: xocolatl spice.

Celia Rees's latest novel is Miss Graham's War, first published as Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook.

What's your Book of the Year? Please tell us in the comments, and come back next week for more great recommendations in Part Two!

SPECIAL FEATURE: Q&A with Sheena Wilkinson about her new novel MISS McVEY TAKES CHARGE

"I’m always keen to be historically accurate but of course Felicity, and to a lesser extent April, represent the more forward-thinking people of their time ..."

Miss McVey Takes Charge: Yorkshire,1936. April McVey is in charge of True Minds Marriage Bureau, trying to find happy futures for the lovelorn of Easterbridge, while the menace of fascism marches through the country.

After two years of matchmaking, she thinks she has seen it all. But when an old friend arrives from Ireland, with a broken heart that’s well beyond April’s experience, and then a young nun asks her to find a match for her lonely brother, the consequences are shattering.

And as political turmoil reaches their own community, will April have the courage to take charge and do the right thing?

Sheena answers questions from Linda Newbery.

Linda: First, congratulations! It's lovely to see this in print, with such an enticing cover. It'll be a treat for readers of Mrs Hart's Marriage Bureau, while for those who haven't yet read that, it'll surely send them to it. Did you already have a sequel in mind while you were finishing the first book?

Sheena: Yes and no! I wrote Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau as a standalone, but the acquiring editor at HarperCollins Ireland was very enthusiastic about its obvious series potential. Which got me thinking… So in my final edit I did drop in a few details I could pick up on for the sequel.

As it turned out, as is the way in publishing, that editor moved on and HarperCollins didn’t offer for the sequel next book because of what they termed ‘disappointing sales’ of Mrs Hart. But by then, encouraged by hundreds of reader reviews which asked for another story, I had written it! I couldn’t bear those readers not to get their sequel, and by then I had put a year’s hard work into it.

I had considered self-publishing but to be honest I was stalling, overwhelmed by what seemed the scariness of it, when Writers Review Publishing invited me on board. I was so thrilled! I was lucky enough to work with Michelle Griffin, the freelance editor who’d worked on Mrs Hart and so knew – and loved – the world, and with Niall McCormack, the illustrator who had designed four of my previous covers. He has a gorgeous style and a real understanding of the aesthetics of the period, and I adore what he’s done.

Linda: I like the way you show April and Felicity adjusting to their lives together - managing domestic and practical details as well as, in April's case, questioning Felicity's commitment. Did you find it tricky to strike the right balance between acceptance of same-sex relationships and giving a realistic impression of attitudes at that time?

Sheena: It was something to think very carefully about, but this is my seventh historical novel, albeit only my second for adults, so treading that line has become very natural. I’m always keen to be historically accurate but of course Felicity, and to a lesser extent April, represent the more forward-thinking people of their time. Because I have a range of characters it was easy enough to show a convincing spread of attitudes, not only about sexuality but about, for example, greyhound racing, which was a hugely-popular sport at the time, with some characters enjoying it without questioning the ethics, and others voicing the opinion that it’s cruel, which is more in keeping with modern sensibilities (and, I know, yours).

Linda: It's just as much Evelyn's story as April's, and this enables you to set some of the scenes in Lisnacashan, the town in northern Ireland where April grew up. When talking about the first book, you said that you'd chosen to set it in Yorkshire, rather than Ireland, to avoid some of the religious divisions that would hamper things in the marriage bureau, but did you immediately see a way to use those here?

Sheena: It's funny, but I never really thought about that until this question! The answer is that when you set anything in Northern Ireland, especially in the past, you simply can’t get away from engaging with religion. It’s just there in the ether and so it found its way into the book. It’s ironic, perhaps, that Protestant Irish Evelyn falls in love with a Catholic Englishman … I come from a mixed background myself which I think informs my outlook on life and my work and helps me to see things in a balanced way.

Linda: You've described the first book as 'feelgood feminism' which is just as apt here - romantic elements and will-they-won't-they combined with awareness of the growing threat of Fascism, which comes close to home in the form of meetings in Easterbridge, a march in nearby Leeds and violence towards some of your characters. There are phrases here that are all too relevant to the worrying surge of the far right in today's public life and politics, and in fact the current situation has worsened during the time you were writing and editing the book. Did you adapt what you were writing in the light of that?

Sheena: The book was a long time in the making, and it rested for a full year before the final edit in the spring of 2025. Even in that year, as you say, things grew much worse for women and other marginalised groups and we’ve seen a surge in far-right attitudes across the world. When Martha comments on the ‘nastiness’ in the atmosphere, I felt very sad that she could be commenting on Britain and other countries today. The best historical fiction should show us ourselves as well as our ancestors: I wish that Miss McVey Takes Charge wasn’t quite so relevant to today’s struggles, but I was grateful for the chance to explore the tension between the political and the personal, and the frustration of feeling up against what feels like an overwhelming tide of bigotry and hatred, in the relatively cosy world of Easterbridge.

Everyone knows about the Battle of Cable Street, which is mentioned at the end of the novel, but the Battle of Holbeck Moor in Leeds on 27th September 1936 is less famous. There was no way Felicity wouldn’t have attended that anti-fascist rally, so I always knew it would form an important part of the narrative. I’ve often written about real-life events but this is the first time I’ve put my fictional characters right in the thick of the action.

Linda: The story ends at a time when the threat of war in Europe is looming. Do you have any plans to continue the story of April and Felicity farther into the 30s or even into the war years?

Sheena: At present I don’t have any such plans. I’ve a novel nearly ready for submission which is set among the staff of a Belfast girls’ school in the 1920s, and my work in progress is a dual timeline set between 2024 and World War 2. So there are no immediate plans to go back to Easterbridge. Having said that, I love April and her friends and if I felt that there was a new story to tell – and, crucially, readers wanting it —I’d love to go back and tell it. And yes, Easterbridge at war would be the ideal focus. I can imagine the Colonel opening up his home to evacuees and the Mill running first aid classes.

As for the structure, I will always highlight the female perspective, but I like giving the men their say too. I love the challenge of writing from a male point of view, and both Fabian (in Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau) and Charlie (in Miss McVey Takes Charge) are the closest I have come to writing romantic heroes. I have to admit I fell in love with Charlie a bit so I hope readers do too!

Linda: The novel is cleverly plotted and moves on at quite a pace. Are you a detailed planner - did you plot each episode before you started writing? Were there any that grew out of the telling, and surprised you? Did any of the characters develop in ways you hadn't quite planned?

Sheena: I do plan, yes, and because of having three viewpoint characters I have to think about who’s best placed to carry the narrative at any given point. But that generally happens as the story unfolds rather than in advance. I always have a big notebook full of notes and planning but I don’t over-plan and I love to be surprised.

The first scene came to me in Shropshire in autumn 2023. I was walking in the woods and playing out the conversation between April and Margaret, who enlists the bureau’s help to find a wife for her brother, Charlie. I saw her as a handsome, but very plainly-dressed young girl, and then I thought, Good lord, she wants to be a nun! And that ushered in Charlie’s background and his faith – I hadn’t actually sat down and planned that, which seems odd now as it’s absolutely fundamental to the conflicts of the story. I love being open to that kind of thing; it makes the writing much more exciting.

Linda: Besides reading, are there other things you do to immerse yourself thoroughly in the social life of the 1930s - fashion, food, manners, idioms, etc?

Sheena: Oh yes! I have always been a geek about history and especially the kind that’s not too long ago. I read a lot of 1930s fiction, from Noel Streatfeild to Dorothy Whipple, and l love reading about the minutiae of daily life. I can get lost for hours on websites full of 1930s dress patterns and the like, and I love nothing better than a day at a museum, especially the kind with reconstructed houses, etc.

I was always very close to my granny, who was born in 1908 and lived until she was 96, and I loved hearing her stories about ‘the olden days’. She would have been a contemporary of the main characters and I’ve given April, Felicity and Evelyn some of her frocks, based on old photos of Gran and Aunt Annie and their chums on church outings and the like. Of course the snaps are all in black and white so I’ve had to guess at the colours. Isn’t that an ideal metaphor for what historical novelists try to do?

Linda: It absolutely is! Thanks, Sheena - I hope Miss McVey will continue to win the hearts of readers.

Miss McVey Takes Charge is published by Writers Review Publishing.

See also: Q&A with Sheena about Mrs Hart's Marriage Bureau

Also from Writers Review Publishing:

The Poet's Wife by Judith Allnatt

David: the Unauthorised Autobiography by Mary Hoffman

The One True Thing by Linda Newbery

Guest review by Sheena Wilkinson: LOVE FORMS by Claire Adam

 

"This is a novel huge in scope, with the action moving over decades and continents, but it is also a deeply personal, private story."

Well-established as one of Ireland’s most acclaimed writers for young people, Sheena Wilkinson has won many prizes for her work, including five Children’s Books Ireland awards. Her first novel for adults, Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau, will soon be followed by Miss McVey Takes Charge, from Writers Review Publishing. Sheena lives in County Derry, on the shores of Lough Neagh, and when she’s not writing she is usually walking her dogs or singing.

I admit: I was in a rush in a bookshop and I picked up Love Forms by Claire Adam because its beautiful cover reminded me of Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers, one of my favourite books of the decade. The blurb, promising adopted babies, nuns and an older protagonist, suggested it might be up my street, so I bought it.

The novels aren’t at all alike, as it happens, except for a kind of unfussy honesty in their clear, uncluttered prose, a profound humanity, and a way of dramatising quiet lives, but Love Forms joins Small Pleasures as one of the best books I have read this decade. As soon as I finished reading, I was listing all the people I might lend it to, while at the same time wanting to keep it close, and then I thought, Aha! I owe Writers Review a review, so what could be better?

Love Forms is the second novel from Trinidad-born writer Claire Adam, whose first novel Golden Child (2019, now hurtling up my TBR pile) won massive acclaim and a slew of awards. It is the story of Dawn Bishop, a ‘rich, white’ girl from a respected Catholic family in Trinidad, who, as a pregnant teenager in 1980 is sent to neighbouring Venezuela on a small boat, to give birth to, and give up, her baby daughter in secrecy. We first meet Dawn on this adventure, where she is vulnerable, uncomprehending, and scared, before the action switches to present-day south London, where she is a woman in her fifties, attempting to make a meaningful post-divorce life while consumed by her lifelong need to find her lost daughter.

But it’s more complicated than that. Not only was the child given up, and the incident never spoken of again in Dawn’s otherwise loving and loquacious family, but her memories of her confinement in Venezuela are impressionistic. She has no idea where she was, or with what order of nuns; she has spent her adult life piecing together, not so much memories, as might-be memories, cutting out pictures of nuns, of the Venezuelan countryside, to compile some kind of record. She is cut off, not only from her daughter, but from her own past.

Dawn tells her story in a leisurely, non-linear way, with a lack of self-pity which makes it all the more moving. At the start of the book she has just made contact with a young Italian woman, who was born and adopted in Venezuela at the right time: she is the fourth possibility: is she the one?

I found the description of Dawn’s ‘Era of letters’ when, as a young, married woman, she wrote by hand ‘to all sorts of government departments and hospitals and churches around Venezuela’ heartbreaking. ‘Each of those feather-weight letters … cost something like 60p in those days. It doesn’t sound like much, but it added up’ expresses not only the cost of an international stamp but the accumulation of the numerous losses, missings-out and half-memories which make up the emptiness at the heart of Dawn’s life and the enormity of trying to fill in the blanks.

The internet comes along and makes the search easier but also more complicated, leaving Dawn vulnerable to scams and disappointments: ‘It was astonishing to us then: that people were able to reach across time and place to find each other again, where previously, connection had seemed impossible.’ One of the aspects of the novel I most liked, partly I suppose because Dawn is only a little older than I am, was how it sketches in the decades from 1980 to the present day.

I love novels which take me away from the familiar. Part of the joy of Love Forms is its juxtaposition of cold, grey England, where, as Dawn tries to explain, ‘It’s not easy’ with Trinidad and Tobago, where everything is brighter, the sea sparkling, the sky hot and blue, but where things are also not easy. Though the action is so interior, I learned something of the history and geography of a part of the world I know little about.

This is a novel huge in scope, with the action moving over decades and continents, but it is also a deeply personal, private story. The narrative voice is unsentimental, even matter-of-fact, as the narrator moves backwards and forwards over the decades, trying to make the reader understand. ‘I’ll be honest’, she says; ‘I’ve tried to draw what I remember’; ‘the point I want to make.’ But it is also beguiling, with a rich, smooth rhythm and flow that I suppose is Caribbean. I found myself slowing down, luxuriating in the prose, admiring the confidence of the storytelling, but always emotionally involved too.

A beautiful and deeply humane novel.

Love Forms is published by Faber.

See also: Sheena's review of The Woman all Spies Fear by Amy Butler Greenfield

Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers is reviewed by Adèle Geras

SPECIAL FEATURE: Q & A with guest Sheena Wilkinson on her first novel for adults, MRS HART'S MARRIAGE BUREAU

 

Well-established as one of Ireland’s most acclaimed writers for young people, Sheena Wilkinson has won many prizes for her work, including five Children’s Books Ireland awards. Her first novel for adults, Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau, is just out from HarperCollins Ireland. Sheena lives in County Derry, on the shores of Lough Neagh, and when she’s not writing she is usually walking her dogs or singing.

Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau:  April McVey hasn’t a romantic bone in her body. So what makes her believe she’ll be the perfect assistant for Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau? Matchmaker Martha hopes the lively Irish girl will be a breath of fresh air for the business which has been her passion since her husband died at Passchendaele, but which is struggling to keep up with the turbulence of the 1930s. When lonely widower Fabian falls for April, Martha’s matchmaking skills are put to their greatest test. Is April as immune to romance as she claims? Is Martha’s interest in Fabian purely professional? Will there be enough happy endings to go round? Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau is an uplifting romance about friendship, loneliness, and the unexpected places where we find fulfilment.

Celia: Having moved, as you have, from Young Adult to Adult fiction, I'd love to know - what precipitated the move?

Sheena: I’ve always intended to write for different audiences, and always wrote short historical fiction for adults alongside my children’s books. My most recent children’s books, a historical trilogy, seemed to be appreciated more by adults so I suppose it was a logical step. Some of my favourite writers, like K.M. Peyton and Noel Streatfeild – and indeed all three of you! – write for children and adults, so it never seemed odd.

Linda:   How and why did you decide to set the novel in a fictitious Yorkshire town rather than in your native Northern Ireland?

Sheena:  I always wanted an Irish main character, and much of the book’s heart and humour lies in the culture shock experienced by both April, my Northern Irish heroine, and the English people she works with. After three novels based on Irish history, I was keen to escape from religion, cultural identity and politics, and that just wouldn’t have been possible in an Irish or Northern Irish marriage bureau! So it was a very pragmatic decision. I love inventing towns, and Easterbridge, a small Yorkshire town, feels very real to me. I hope it convinces the reader! I did live in the north of England for six years and of course much of my cultural background is English. I wouldn’t set a book in a country I didn’t know well.

Adele: You have a gift of bringing the physical details of both place and people to life in a way which reminded me sometimes of one of my favourite writers, Dorothy Whipple. Were you influenced at all by the women writers of the 30s. Or by any other writers?

Sheena: That’s really observant of you, Adele, because not only is Dorothy Whipple one of my favourite writers, but I discovered her during the first lockdown, which is when I started to write Mrs Hart. In both cases, I wanted something essentially positive and escapist, but not too light. I was amazed that I hadn’t read Whipple before. I love how she brings you straight into the middle of a household and, with just a few details, makes you feel you know these people intimately. It’s honestly the greatest compliment that you found even a tiny spark of comparison! When I’m writing, I like to read novels written at the time I’m writing about, so yes, Whipple, E.M. Delafield, Noel Streatfield, Dorothy L. Sayers, as well as slightly later writers such as Barbara Pym are all favourites.

Adele:  I was surprised by the turn of events, (no spoilers) and thought the use of the double point of view worked so well. Did you ever consider a first person narrative? Do you have strong views about the First Person/Third Person debate?

Sheena:  I’ve written in both first and third, but on the whole I prefer third – I tend to write very close third, and I find it can do everything that first does, in terms of intimacy but without the self-consciousness of first. There are three POV characters, April, Martha and Fabian, with the women taking on most of the story, but I did want to include a male point of view too. It was really interesting to present the same characters from both inside and outside.

And I’m glad that you were surprised by the turn of events! I’ll say more about that below!

Linda:  In an interview you said that you see the book as 'feelgood feminism' (great term). Were there any points at which the political background threatened to darken the novel more than you intended?

Sheena: Yes! That was probably the biggest issue I had – I really wanted to maintain an uplifting tone, with warmth and a sense of community and, above all, hope, but I also wanted to explore some of the darker realities of the 1930s, in particular the rise of fascism, refugees and gender politics. Two things helped me. One was my experience of writing more overtly political novels – Name upon Name, Star by Star and Hope against Hope – but trying not to let the politics take over because the books were for a younger audience. The other was exploring how Call the Midwife, of which I am a big fan, negotiates that juxtaposition of serious social realism with sweetness and fun, without awkward tonal shifts. Because life actually is bittersweet.

Linda:  Basing the story around a marriage bureau is a clever idea, and April is a delightful character! Did you plan from the beginning how the story would end for her, or did that grow out of the writing? (I know ... difficult to answer that without spoilers ... )

Sheena:  It’s a hard question to answer, possibly because of spoilers, but essentially, yes, I always knew precisely the form of fulfilment that April would find for herself. It was also important for me to write about a variety of characters, main and secondary, for whom marriage was not the best outcome. After decades of singleness, I was married myself last year, aged 53, to a widower I’d known as a friend for almost thirty years. I don’t think I would have been attracted to this subject otherwise. I was the – I won’t say victim, but certainly object – of some very ham-fisted matchmaking efforts over the years, and I must admit I had great fun matching characters and futures!

Sheena with her husband Seamus

Celia:  I noticed that, through Felicity, you had some observations to make about people's perception of Children's writers. Did you find any significant differences in writing for different audiences?

Sheena:  I’ve definitely found it easier to write for adults – for the first time in a long time I’m writing for the reader I am now, rather than the reader I used to be. I feel there’s more space to explore the characters’ inner lives, and I suppose more freedom. But I always tried to write with depth and precision, and care for language, so in that sense it’s not very different. I had quite a lot of fun making one of my characters a 1930s children’s author. She complains about not being taken seriously as a ‘proper’ writer, and I have to say some of that did come from the heart!

Celia: Do you think you will return to Children's / YA fiction any time soon?

Sheena:  At the moment, my heart is definitely with writing for adults. I have so many ideas I’d like to explore. If I do write for children again, it would definitely be historical – that’s my favourite genre. I’ve never written a girls’ school story, which was the subject of my PhD thesis, so that’s something I might consider – but I’m 54, and to be honest I’m not really reading children’s books these days, so I think other people are better suited to writing them.

Adele:  Will there be a sequel? I would love one….

Sheena:  So would I! The publishers, HarperCollins Ireland, mentioned a sequel quite early in our relationship, though I don’t yet have a contract for one. I had planned not to write one without a contract, but like you – and I’m very happy to say, many readers – I was very keen to find out what happened next, and couldn’t resist starting …  It’s set in 1936, with old and new characters.

Thanks so much, Sheena, for answering our questions - we hope a great many readers will enjoy your novel as much as we did!

Lough Neagh

Mrs Hart's Marriage Bureau is published by Harper Collins Ireland.

READING AHEAD Part 2: what's in our sights?

More of our contributors - including some new faces to the blog - give us their reading choices. What was on their Christmas list? What have they been hoarding for a special treat? Old favourites, new publications, authors recently discovered ... 

As ever, a big thank you to our guests, thanks to whose generosity we post a new review every Monday. We hope you'll find something here to add to your own to-be-read pile.

Savita Kalhan: I am eagerly awaiting Crossfire by Malorie Blackman, the fifth book in the iconic Noughts and Crosses series, which is to be published next summer. The original series for children was inspired by political events and racial discrimination. Crossfire is no different. Brexit, Trump and the rise of the far right, have inspired Crossfire, and will no doubt spark discussions amongst teenagers and adults alike.

Can We All Be Feminists is a collection of essays by seventeen writers from diverse backgrounds. Listening to some of the essayists at a Waterstones’ event, and reading Eishar Kaur’s essay on the way home on the train highlights how slow change continues to be – she is writing as a third generation British Asian woman and I am second generation – and also how ‘feminism’ can mean radically different things according to your background, ethnicity and colour.

Hilary McKay: Helen Macdonald's H is for Hawk was my car book. I have car books, I’ve had them for years. Comes from the days of waiting with hot water bottles in the dark outside music lessons, party venues, gyms, schools, all those places that I don’t wait outside of anymore because the children are grown up(ish). So I’ve brought it into the warm, thing of beauty that it is, with that cover. That hawk. Now I’m two chapters in, and it’s as I guessed and as I’ve heard, long distance poetry. I have no fear of finishing it because I know already I’ll just turn to the beginning and start again.

Jon Appleton: A few years ago Paul Burston made the seamless transition from writing hilarious comedies to dark, searching crime fiction. I enjoyed The Black Path hugely so am looking forward to Paul’s creative exploration of the dark side of social media in The Closer I Get (Orenda Books, May). Paul is massively savvy about the online world so I’m sure his take will be insightful and persuasive and his story compelling.

I love it when Jill Dawson takes characters from real life and immerses them in turbulent semi-fictional scenarios - her next book, The Language of Birds (Sceptre, April) plunges us into the 1970s and the infamous disappearance of Lord Lucan. Can’t wait! In the meantime why not read The Crime Writer, her most recent novel which is about Patricia Highsmith? Chilling.

Leslie Wilson: I'm looking forward to reading The Pursuit of Power, Europe 1815-1914, by Richard J Evans. Evans is an author who I greatly esteem, because he has written about Nazi Germany in a dispassionate, enlightening and scholarly way. This book, however, deals with the period between Waterloo and the outbreak of World War 1, the era that my English and Silesian-German grandparents were born into (the latter part, anyway). There was so much going on during that period; the revolutions of 1848, the growth of cultural and political nationalism, colonialism, technological change, but also feminism and trade unionism. Can't wait.

Nick Manns: I caught Paul Broks on Radio 4 last Spring. From this fleeting hearing I gathered that he was a respected neuropsychologist, talking about the importance of magical thinking. The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars defies categorisation (so is every bookseller’s nightmare). Depending on where you jump in – and Broks is happy for readers to work through in any order – it’s autobiography, speculative philosophy, neuroscience, grief memoir and ghost story. It's also unsettling: “There is no clear dividing line in the brain between inner imaginings and perceptions of the real, solid ‘world out there’. Reality and fantasy are built into the same neural circuits." I’m about to reread it, letting into the house the quotidian, the strange, the dead.

Gwen Grant: A Place in the Woods, by Helen Hoover, is one of my most treasured books. Chicagoans Helen and her husband, Adrian, move to the vast forests on the edge of Minnesota’s northern wilderness. Helen’s deep love and respect for the forest and its wild inhabitants shines through as she shares the beauty and
danger of this world..

Environmentalists, they face many challenges. A violent storm almost destroys their cabin. Hunters appear. Their money runs out. Only when Helen starts to sell her detailed and lovely stories about the woods, illustrated with Ade’s beautiful pen and ink drawings, does the threat to their new life begin to lessen.

Chris Priestley: Having had the privilege of illustrating Jason Reynolds’ Long Way Down and hearing him speak at the Edinburgh Book Festival in August, I intend to work my way through his other books. I’m going to start with When I Was the Greatest. 

I am a big fan of the short story form as a writer and reader, but for some reason I’ve never got round to reading any Flannery O’Connor. I’m about to put that right with A Good Man Is Hard to Find. I also have Alice Munro’s Moons of Jupiter to look forward to.

Mary Hoffman: The book I am most looking forward to is Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light, whenever it comes out. I adored the first two, which I have read twice - and seen the stage plays and TV adaptation twice too. Meanwhile I am on the London Library's waiting list for Diarmaid MacCullough’s Thomas Cromwell: a Life, and I do have the 642 pages of Giles Tremlett’s Isabella of Castile: Europe’s first Great Queen, waiting by my bedside, for when I’ve finished Charles Ross’s Edward lV. Almost all my non-fiction reading is history these days. On the fiction front, I shall wait till Kate Atkinson’s Transcription comes out in paperback in March, since I don’t buy fiction in hardback (I make an exception for Hilary Mantel). Anne Tyler’s Clock Dance isn’t available till July next year but Madeleine Miller’s Circe is on my Christmas list. 

Paul Dowswell: Francis Spufford’s Golden Hill is now on my ‘read again pile’, and I’m happy to recommend it to anyone looking for a riveting read. Spufford’s tale, of a young man recently arrived in colonial New York with an exceedingly large cheque, is a glorious cinematic, smell-o-vision adventure. I can’t remember the last time I read a book I could see so clearly in my mind’s eye. Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Wilkinson and Oona Chaplin strutted the stage and read the pages for me. Spufford teaches creative writing at Goldsmiths. If he teaches half as well as he writes they are very lucky to have him.

Patricia Elliott: Rosie, the wonderful writer Rose Tremain's memories of growing up in sooty post-war London, with school holidays spent at the country paradise of Linkenholt, her grandparents' home, is both delightful and disturbing. Her father deserts the family when Rose is ten. Her bleak childhood, dominated by her cold, unkind mother, is alleviated only by her loving nanny, and by teachers who encourage her creativity when she is banished to boarding school so her mother can marry a new man. Only after being 'finished' in France, does she finally rebel and escape to Oxford. Some of the most interesting parts refer to incidents that have inspired her novels.

Cynthia Jefferies: Having recently discovered the British Library Crime Classics, what better title to choose for Christmas reading than J.Jefferson Farjeon’s Mystery in White, his Christmas Crime story? First published in 1937 it has an evocative cover complete with deep snow, stars twinkling and a steam train stuck in a snow drift. Four murders in a dozen hours! I reckon I’ve earned my bit of turkey. So says the police inspector, belatedly arriving at the scene. Eleanor Farjeon’s brother was prolific so I will be looking out for more. I love crime within this period a lot, almost enough to try it myself!

Sheena Wilkinson: Christmas is a time for old friends. This year Linda Newbery’s The Key to Flambards sent me back to K.M. Peyton’s originals. My own work in progress is set in 1921, so revisiting the post-war atmosphere of Flambards Divided is fascinating– though my book is set in Belfast which had its mind on things other than horses and racing cars. I’ve recently loved Kate Atkinson’s Transcription, and I hear there’s a new Jackson Brodie on the horizon next year. So that has settled my Christmas reading – a leisurely reread of the first four Jackson Brodie books to get me in the mood.

Linda Newbery:  I keep seeing clips and mentions of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (not least interviewing Michelle Obama at the Festival Hall!) and am impressed by everything she says.  Americanah, a story of two returned Nigerian exiles, former lovers, sounds enticing - and I've just seen that Barack Obama has chosen it as one of his books of the year, too. Having been gripped by Michelle Paver's chilling Dark Matter, I've now got Thin Air, a ghost story set in the Himalayas in the 1930s. And I have high expectations of The Binding, a first adult novel by Bridget Collins, known for her bold and accomplished teenage fiction. We'll hear more about this for sure, and just look at that sumptuous cover!

Finally here is Bridget herself, who'll be a January guest:

Bridget Collins: I’m really looking forward to re-reading Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver. It’s a

Photo: Symon Hamer

brilliant, immersive reworking of the Rumpelstiltskin story, with wonderfully rich world-building and great characters. The images that stay with me are so beautiful (think silver, ice, dissolving mirrors, silk) that I can’t wait to rediscover them. The first time I read it I just devoured it – but then, because it was so in demand, I had to give it straight back to the library! So I’m going to buy it and go more slowly this time, relishing every word.