I read Soldiers’ Wives in one delicious go, barely even pausing to take a sip of tea or check my Twitter feed. The tale of three women who are all trying to get to grips with army life, it’s pacy, entertaining and utterly authentic. Fiona Field (a successful novelist who has written 16 books under the names of Kate Lace, Catherine Jones and Annie Jones) is more clued up about ...keep reading
“A more than worthy winner – original, passionate, inventive and uplifting. Homer would be proud of her.” Those were the words of Joanna Trollope, chair of the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction judges, last night when she announced this year’s winner – Madeline Miller. American writer and Latin teacher Miller won the £30,000 prize for The Song of Achilles, the debut novel she spent ten years working on. A captivating, ...keep reading
Two ultra-distinguished writers welcomed guests to the announcement of the 2012 Orange Prize shortlist at the London Book Fair yesterday morning. First up was Kate Mosse, author of the phenomenally successful Labyrinth and co-founder of the prize, who was wearing the grooviest black lace-up platform shoes I’ve seen in a long time. Then came Joanna Trollope, who’s written 17 bestselling novels and is this year’s chair of the Orange Prize ...keep reading
The flower market in London’s Columbia Road has been on my “must visit” list for years. Every Sunday the narrow street in the heart of the East End is filled with stalls selling everything from hyacinths to narcissi to ten-foot banana trees. I knew it would be exactly my sort of thing. Reading Joanna Trollope’s Daughters-in-Law a couple of weeks back reminded me it was high time I got my ...keep reading
After failing to be 100 per cent convinced by Joanna Trollope’s Daughters-in-Law, I decided to give her latest novel a go this week. The Soldier’s Wife certainly sounded promising. It’s the story of a mother-of-three whose army major husband has just returned home after a six-month tour of duty in Afghanistan. While her husband was away Alexa Riley did everything – looked after their three-year-old twins, coped with the boarding ...keep reading
The first Joanna Trollope book I ever read was The Rector’s Wife. I was so captivated by her 90s tale of a vicar’s wife who shocks everyone by taking a job at a supermarket to make ends meet that I was desperate to read her earlier books. The instant I’d finished that one I rushed out to buy another, feverishly working my way through her backlist in the way I used ...keep reading