I enjoyed this audiobook of Tracy Chevalier’s second novel. It begins in a London graveyard at the turn of the Twentieth century when two well to do families are visiting their family plots to (quite strangely, I thought) mark the death of Queen Victoria. The daughters of the families (aged 6/7 at the beginning of the book) strike up a friendship, and much of the story is told from their perspective, although other characters get their chapters too. There is lots of stuff about class and society – the girls start an unlikely friendship with the poor gravediggers son, and he also becomes pivotal to the plot. One of the mothers joins the suffragettes movement, and there is some interesting digression into that world too.
For once I wasn’t bothered by the posh English narrator, since that was entirely fitting for this London society period drama.
Sarah Wray Writer 