Crooked Heart

Looking ahead to 2016 (Christmas post and all that) and our book club choice for January, which is the wonderful Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans.

‘The best novel I have read in the last five years... I couldn’t love it more’ - India Knight

From the highly acclaimed author of Their Finest Hour and a Half comes this acidly heartwarming tale of the relationship between a WW2 orphan evacuee and his foster mother set against the backdrop of the Blitz.

When Noel Bostock – aged ten, no family - is evacuated from London to escape the bombs, he ends up living in St Albans with Vera Sedge - thirty-six and drowning in debts and dependents. Always desperate for money, she’s unscrupulous about how she gets it.

Noel’s mourning his godmother, Mattie, a former suffragette. Brought up to share her disdain for authority and eclectic approach to education, he has little in common with other children and even less with Vee, who hurtles impulsively from one self-made crisis to the next. The war’s thrown up new opportunities for making money but what Vee needs (and what she’s never had) is a cool head and the ability to make a plan.

On her own, she’s a disaster. With Noel, she’s a team.

Together they cook up an idea. Criss-crossing the bombed suburbs of London, Vee starts to make a profit and Noel begins to regain his interest in life.

But there are plenty of other people making money out of the war and some of them are dangerous. Noel may have been moved to safety, but he isn’t actually safe at all...

Lissa Evans has written books for both adults and children, including Their Finest Hour and a Half, longlisted for the Orange Prize, Small Change for Stuart, and shortlisted for many awards including the Carnegie Medal and the Costa Book Awards. Crooked Heart was longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Crooked Heart is available online in hardback and as an ebook and will be available in paperback from January. And if you received a free copy of the book, don't forget to add your questions and comments for the author to the thread.

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