Enchanting retro reads: THE GARRICK YEAR by Margaret Drabble, THE ENCHANTED APRIL by
The Garrick Year is available now
THE GARRICK YEAR by Margaret Drabble (Canongate £10.99, 208pp)
Former model Emma is married to actor David and drowning in the drudgery of raising two small children when she’s offered the job of a TV newsreader. But David has agreed to a season in rep in Hereford’s new Garrick Theatre and is determined they should go.
Unwillingly she follows . . . Curtain up on thespian, egotistical shenanigans, possible infidelity and deception. But at its heart, this bittersweet 1960s novel is an unsparing exposé of women’s lives, sacrifices and marriages, written in searing, intelligent prose.
Drabble (whose first husband was an actor) creates authentic, if not always likeable, female characters craving more fulfilment in a man’s world.
The Enchanted April is available now
THE ENCHANTED APRIL by Elizabeth von Arnim (Macmillan Collector’s Library £10.99, 288pp)
Young Lotty is suffocated by her penny-pinching, controlling husband, and godly Rose despises her husband’s lucrative career writing erotic memoirs, so when they spot an advert for a medieval castle rental in Italy, they impulsively book it, alongside two strangers: older widow Mrs Fisher and single, spoiled and breathtakingly beautiful Lady Caroline Dester.
To Lotty, everything is heavenly – ‘she had found her celestial legs’ – and her infectious joy and unfiltered comments gradually release neglected joy in the others.
Sharp, witty, with gorgeous descriptions (and, frankly, undeserving men), you’ll be booking a trip to Portofino with your best friend by the end.
The Luck of the Town is available now from the Mail Bookshop
THE LUCK OF THE TOWN by Marion Fox (British Library £10.99, 256pp)
The British Library’s series of weird and unsettling stories continues with this haunting tale of a skeleton unearthed beneath the walls of the old town hall in a northern town.
We meet former artist Mary, married to untrustworthy lecturer Anthony, as she spots a hooded figure near her house. A former beau, Edward, arrives as the academics at the university examine the bones against a political backdrop of industrial unrest. But who is the ghostly figure who stalks the town, and what was her extraordinary fate?
After a slow start, human conflicts of the heart, gossip and backstabbing sit alongside supernatural acts of revenge and delayed justice.