The Palace of Strange Girls
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Blackpool, England, 1959. The Singleton family is on holiday. For seven-year-old Beth, just out of the hospital, this means struggling to fill in her 'I-Spy' book and avoiding her mother Ruth's eagle-eyed supervision. Her sixteen-year-old sister Helen, meanwhile, has befriended a waitress whose fun-loving ways hint at a life beyond Ruth's strict rules.
But times are changing. As foreman of the local cotton mill, Ruth's husband, Jack, is caught between unions and owners whose cost-cutting measures threaten an entire way of life. And his job isn't the only thing at risk. When a letter arrives from Crete, a secret re-emerges from the rubble of Jack's wartime past that could destroy his marriage.
As Helen is tempted outside the safe confines of her mother's stern edicts with dramatic consequences, an unexpected encounter inspires Beth to forge her own path. Over the holiday week, all four Singletons must struggle to find their place in the shifting world of promenade amusements, illicit sex, and stilted afternoon teas in this touching and evocative novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Day's debut novel, inspired by her childhood, is a dated story of four days in the lives of an English family on summer holiday in 1959. WWII vet Jack Singleton is using the holiday in the seaside town of Blackpool to decide his future. A foreman at a cotton mill, he is torn between two job offers: manager of Prospect Mill or union representative. Jack is hiding his predicament from his perfectionist wife, Ruth, while the couple's older daughter, 16-year-old Helen, is obsessed with new, fashionable clothes and finding a boyfriend. Sickly seven-year-old Beth simply wants to escape her overprotective mother. During the brief holiday, the family faces many dilemmas when Jack's wartime adventures come back to haunt him, Ruth's obsession with buying a new house tests her marriage, and the girls deal with treacherous friendships and unwelcome sexual advances. While the plot moves quickly, the number and variety of scrapes the family navigates in only four days strains credulity. Period slang and references are doubtless authentic, but will make the book a difficult read for Americans.
