Part of the Furniture
Book
Paperback/Softback
288 pages
978-0-552-77260-0 (ISBN)
Description
Early in 1941, having just seen off at Euston Station the two young men whom she has loved for the best part of her seventeen years, Juno Marlowe is hurrying down a London street with her ill-fitting shoes in her hands. Aeroplanes thunder overhead; a battery of guns opens up. When a stick of bombs fall she cowers, then takes to her heels in flight. She is rescued from this nightmare by a gaunt stranger, frail and older than his years, and, guiding her up his front stairs, he offers her the protection of her house.Given this respite from the bleakness of having no home and no family to turn to, Juno encounters first tragedy, then a series of events which take her to a house in the West Country and the blossoming of an English spring into which war only occasionally intrudes. Here she may find peace; here she will no longer be part of the furniture.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Transworld Publishers Ltd
ISBN-13
978-0-552-77260-0 (9780552772600)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Mary Wesley was born near Windsor in 1912. Her education took her to the London School of Economics and during the War she worked in the War Office. She also worked part-time inthe antiques trade. Mary Wesley lived in London, France, Italy, Germany and several places in the West Country. She used to comment that her 'chief claim to fame is arrested development, getting my first novel published at the age of seventy'. That first novel, Jumping the Queue, is published by Black Swan, as are her later novels, The Camomile Lawn, Second Fiddle, Harnessing Peacocks, The Vacillations of Poppy Carew, Not That Sort of Girl, A Sensible Life, A Dubious Legacy, An Imaginative Experience and Part of the Furniture. With the help of Kim Sayer's evocative photographs Mary Wesley showed us her own personal West Country in her last book, Part of the Scenery. Mary Wesley was awarded the CBE in the 1995 New Year's honour list.