A single thread by Tracy Chevalier

Tracy Chevalier is a very good author with some brilliant books such as Girl with a Pearl Earring and Remarkable Creatures behind her, and I am wondering if this one sold so many copies because people were expecting more of the same.

I suspect I am bang smack in the centre of the target audience for this one. Lady of a certain age who is not adverse to a bit of nostalgia, does a little tapestry and has a great fondness for Winchester Cathedral, but no, I wasn't struck by it at all. If I had misplaced it half way through I don't think I would have spent too much time searching for it.

The lead characters just don't seem as convincing as the people in her other novels, and I felt as though Tracy Chevalier put too much emphasis on including facts from her research books, to the point that even the first page feels as though some of the text was cut from the cathedral guide book.

We follow the (mostly) uneventful life of Violet Speedwell who, like so many other women in the 1930s, found herself unmarried and caring for an aging parent. In an effort to find an outside interest, she takes up embroidery as part of a team working on cushions and kneelers in the cathedral, and consequently feels so empowered she abandons her mother and takes a room in a boarding house.

There is more to it than that of course, but the writing was only thinly draped around the premise and all the threads were tied off rather too neatly at the end.

Comments

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