Delighted to be joining the blog blitz day for The Saturday Letters by Jill Treseder, published in November 2017 by S Books, and available from Amazon in the UK and US. I’m rather intrigued by this one, and rather sorry I couldn’t find the time and space to read it. A family saga, but just 118 pages – and the description looks fascinating:
When Henrietta finds herself excluded from seeing her grandchildren, she decides to write to them to explain their Afro-Caribbean origins in slavery.
She tells the story of her childhood in Bermuda, of marrying a British soldier, bringing up six children in Gibraltar and moving to England on her husband’s retirement from the army. Writing the letters reveals unexpected and challenging truths about herself and her family, which give her food for reflection.
Do her grandchildren ever receive the letters? And if so, how true a picture of their grandmother and family do they paint?
Let’s try a short extract too:
First things first. I introduce myself. I am your great-grandmother. Your grandmother, Ada, is my daughter. As you know, of course, you visit her every Saturday afternoon with your parents. I live in the house just up the hill from hers. Not the one joined on to your grandmother’s house, but the next one.
I should say, I did live there. Because, if my plan works out, you will be opening these letters as a young man, aged twenty-one years, and I will no longer be on this earth.
(Just a little warning – this one is for 18+ readers, with scenes of a sexual nature.)
About the author
Jill Treseder was born in Hampshire and lived all her childhood in sight of the sea on the Solent and in Devon, Cornwall and West Wales. She now lives with her husband in Devon overlooking the River Dart.
After graduating from Bristol with a degree in German, Jill followed careers in social work, management development and social research, obtaining a PhD from the School of Management at the University of Bath along the way.Since 2006 she has focused on writing fiction.
This does look interesting. Do you know if it’s told entirely through the letters?
Had a quick look through, Nina, and it is told mainly in letters but with the writers’ comments in between…
Thnaks Anne. Sounds good.