The party includes a small, unaccompanied child, Pamela, whom Ellen volunteers to look after until her parents can be found, but as the war progresses the days turn to years. It is 1940 and a busload of bombed-out civilians from Southampton has arrived in the village of Upton, where Ellen Parr and her much older husband Selwyn, a miller with whom she has what’s described as a mariage blanc, are helping to find them beds for the night. The writing is often dazzling – a child’s voice is “clear, piping, like a twig peeled of its bark” – and this, too, lifts what might have been a sentimental story into different territory altogether. From the off, Frances Liardet’s second novel, published 25 years after her first, distances itself from nostalgia and insists on its own terms. (Feb.D omestic stories of women’s lives in wartime are common in genre publishing but rarer in literary fiction. Agent: Deborah Schneider, Gelfman Schneider/ Readers will be captivated by Ellen’s story, which is bolstered by a swift plot and characters who realistically and memorably grow.
Ellen glimpses similarities between Pamela and Penny, and they form a life-changing friendship. Over 30 years later, Ellen befriends Penny Lacey, a lonely young boarding school student in Upton. Though distraught by Pamela’s departure, Ellen survives the devastation around her with the love and support of Selwyn, her childhood friend Lucy Horne, and other villagers who have been a constant presence in Ellen’s life. Ellen treats Pamela as the daughter she never had (Selwyn is impotent) for the next few years, until Pamela is eight and a relative of Pamela’s finds her and takes her to live with family members. In 1940, while helping evacuees of a nearby bombing who have arrived at Upton by bus, Ellen meets Pamela Pickering, a young child left alone on the bus. Ellen Parr is married to Selwyn, owner of the local mill in the village of Upton, near Southampton. British author and translator Liardet’s moving American debut, set in WWII England, follows a childless woman discovering joy after she begins caring for a young girl.
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