Between the Regions of Kindness by Alice Jolly #Review #Giveaway

 

 I am so happy to bring to you Alice Jolly's latest family saga, Between the Regions of Kindness. I am even more delighted to be hosting a Giveaway of the book. Details on how to enter are at the foot of this post. First though, a little about the book:

Coventry, 1941. The morning after one of the worst nights of the Blitz. Twenty-two-year-old Rose enters the remains of a bombed house to find her best friend dead. Shocked and confused, she makes a split-second decision that will reverberate for generations to come.

More than fifty years later, in modern-day Brighton, Rose’s granddaughter Lara waits for the return of her eighteen-year-old son Jay. Reckless and idealistic, he has gone to Iraq to stand on a conflict line as an unarmed witness to peace.

Lara holds her parents, Mollie and Rufus, partly responsible for Jay’s departure. But in her attempts to explain their thwarted passions, she finds all her assumptions about her own life are called into question.

Then into this damaged family come two strangers – Oliver, a former faith healer, and Jemmy, a young woman devastated by the loss of a baby. Together they help to establish a partial peace – but at what cost?

My Thoughts

This is an ambitious book which spans the generations. The narrative alternates back and forwards through the decades, from Coventry in the 1940's through to generations later in 2003 and back again.  It brings in themes of the home front, and wars fought overseas through the years and the effects of war on the individual. You see the consequences on the individual of war through the Second World War and the Iraq War.

    I found all strands of the story to be interesting but felt particularly drawn to young Rose in the blitz and the consequences of her actions. Alice Jolly takes you into her characters' internal monologues and you sense in the tiny details she picks out how they perceive the moment they are in. This is an atmospheric piece of writing which is a rewarding and textured read.

In short: A family saga which weaves together four generations.

About the Author

Alice Jolly is a novelist and playwright. Her memoir Dead Babies and Seaside Towns won the PEN Ackerley Prize 2016. She also won the V. S. Pritchett Memorial Prize awarded by the Royal Society of Literature in 2014 for one of her short stories, `Ray the Rottweiler'. She has published three novels previously, What the Eye Doesn't See, If Only You Knew and Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile. She has also written for the Guardian, Mail on Sunday and the Independent, and broadcast for Radio 4. She lives in Stroud, Gloucestershire.

You can follow Alice here: Twitter 

Book links: Amazon UK 

Thanks to Alice Jolly and Anne Cater of Random Things Tours 

for a copy of the book and a place on the tour. 

Check out these brilliant bloggers!

Giveaway (UK only)

To win a print copy of Between the Regions of Kindness,  just Follow and Retweet the pinned Tweet at @bookslifethings .

 Closing Date is 30th April 2019 and there is one winner.

*Terms and Conditions –UK entries only.  The winner will be selected at random via Tweetdraw from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then I reserve the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over.  Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.