![]() ![]() Already a case is presented for women's rights and Beatrice is elevated to heroine of a class-ridden community ranging from aristocracy to gypsy, each one knowing their place in society. Her father, on whom she doted, has just died and she is here to take up the position of Latin teacher at the local school, a provocative appointment made possible by her benefactor, Agatha Kent, one of two women on an otherwise all-male board. ![]() It is 1914 when Beatrice Nash, 23, arrives at the small coastal town of Rye and is about to start a new life. War beckons and the author allows this knowledge to permeate life like a black cloud, from the start. ![]() It first appeared in her successful debut novel, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand (2010), but this time the bucolic background is less rom-com, more thick-lit, the plot intense. When you learn the author, now living in America, spent her formative years in a Sussex village, you may think she is working Ye Olde English Village genre out of her system, and you could be right. ![]() But first acclimatise yourself to the prose, written in the weirdly formal style of Edwardian literature, not so much long-winded as habitually including every thought and detail in a sentence before they can escape. By the time the camomile tea has chilled, two chapters in, you are hooked. ![]()
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