How It Was

Janet Ellis

From Shelf: Two Fond Recommends - Complicated Families

A new, darkly compelling novel from the author of the highly-acclaimed The Butcher's Hook. It's the 1970s and in rural Kent nothing much is happening, except a woman has lit a fuse under her marriage and the explosion is coming.

'IMMERSIVE, AMAZING, REMARKABLE' MARIAN KEYES'JANET ELLIS WRITES WITH TENDERNESS AND WISDOM' ERIN KELLY'AN ATMOSPHERIC, CLEVER NOVEL THAT WILL GET UNDER YOUR SKIN' REDMarion Deacon sits by the hospital bed of her dying husband, Michael. Outwardly she is, as she says, an unremarkable old woman. She has long concealed her history - and her feelings - from the casual observer. But as she sits by Michael's bed, she's haunted by memories from almost forty years ago . . . Marion Deacon is a wife and mother, and not particularly good at being either. It's the 1970s and in her small village the Swinging 60s, the wave of feminism, the prospect of an exciting life, have all swerved past her. Reading her teenage daughter's diary, it seems that Sarah is on the threshold of getting everything her mother Marion was denied, and Marion cannot bear it - what she does next has terrible and heart-breaking consequences for the whole family.Janet Ellis writes of the exquisite pain of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the complexity of family and a mother-daughter relationship that is as memorable as it is utterly believable.'ELLIS WRITES BEAUTIFULLY' DAILY MAIL'AN EMOTIONAL EPIC' GOOD HOUSEKEEPING'AFFECTING, ENGAGING AND READABLE' OBSERVER'A TALE OF SILENCES, SECRETS AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS' MAIL ON SUNDAY'IMMERSIVE, AMAZING, REMARKABLE' MARIAN KEYES'JANET ELLIS WRITES WITH TENDERNESS AND WISDOM' ERIN KELLY'AN ATMOSPHERIC, CLEVER NOVEL THAT WILL GET UNDER YOUR SKIN' REDMarion Deacon sits by the hospital bed of her dying husband, Michael. Outwardly she is, as she says, an unremarkable old woman. She has long concealed her history - and her feelings - from the casual observer. But as she sits by Michael's bed, she's haunted by memories from almost forty years ago . . . Marion Deacon is a wife and mother, and not particularly good at being either. It's the 1970s and in her small village the Swinging 60s, the wave of feminism, the prospect of an exciting life, have all swerved past her. Reading her teenage daughter's diary, it seems that Sarah is on the threshold of getting everything her mother Marion was denied, and Marion cannot bear it - what she does next has terrible and heart-breaking consequences for the whole family.Janet Ellis writes of the exquisite pain of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the complexity of family and a mother-daughter relationship that is as memorable as it is utterly believable.'ELLIS WRITES BEAUTIFULLY' DAILY MAIL'AN EMOTIONAL EPIC' GOOD HOUSEKEEPING'AFFECTING, ENGAGING AND READABLE' OBSERVER'A TALE OF SILENCES, SECRETS AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS' MAIL ON SUNDAY'ENGROSSING' MIRROR

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