Book Review: Opal Plumstead

Opal Plumstead is the plain and clever one in her family, unlike her beautiful older sister. While her sister works in a shop selling beautiful things to rich ladies, Opal is a scholarship student looking up to her writer father. But her father is keeping secrets from the family – and when he is taken away to prison in disgrace, it’s off to work for Opal.

The Fairy Glen sweet factory seems like a dream job for modern readers, but we quickly learn how difficult the work is and how cruel the other girls are to Opal. As with Wilson’s more modern work, we also see what it means to have to struggle with money, to have to think about each meal and expense very carefully.

Opal’s ‘step up’ in the factory – to painting the pictures on the chocolate boxes – seems like a dream come true, and she soon comes under the influence of the factory’s owner, who introduces her to the suffragette moment. For a time it seems like it all might work out – but Wilson refuses to give her readers a fairytale ending.

This is an incredibly engrossing look at pre-war Britain, which is in some ways so distant and in other ways very familiar. Opal’s story twists and turns in unexpected ways – and nothing is sugar-coated for a young reader. Although it’s pitched at her typical 9-12 audience, teen readers would enjoy this too. One of my very favourite Jacqueline Wilsons (of the hundred or so that prolific lady has penned) and highly recommended.