One Puzzling Afternoon by Emily Critchley
On a suburban street filled with secrets, 84 year old Edie Green must look back into the past to discover what happened to her friend Lucy, who went missing years before . . .
A mystery she can’t remember. A friend she can’t forget.
I kept your secret Lucy. I’ve kept it for more than sixty years . . .
It is 1951, and at number six Sycamore Street fifteen-year-old Edie Green is lonely. Living alone with her eccentric mother – who conducts seances for the local Ludthorpe community – she is desperate for something to shake her from her dull, isolated life.
#OnePuzzlingAfternoon @EmilyMCritchley @ZaffreBooks @Tr4cyF3nt0n #CompulsiveReaders #blogtour
When the popular, pretty Lucy Theddle befriends Edie, she thinks all her troubles are over. But Lucy has a secret, one Edie is not certain she should keep . . .
Then Lucy goes missing.
2018. Edie is eighty-two and still living in Ludthorpe. When one day she glimpses Lucy Theddle, still looking the same as she did at fifteen, her family write it off as one of her many mix ups. There’s a lot Edie gets confused about these days. A lot she finds difficult to remember. But what she does know is this: she must find out what happened to Lucy, all those years ago . . .
My Review
What an emotional read. Oh my God! 84-year-old Edie lives with dementia and the passages where she is struggling to separate the past from the present are heart-breaking. At times she doesn’t recognise her own son Daniel or even her beloved granddaughter Amy.
It’s 2018 and Edie has just seen her friend Lucy, looking the same as she did when they were teenagers. But it can’t be real because Lucy vanished in 1951 and was never seen again. And Edie is determined to find out what happened to her, if only she could remember. For some of my buddy readers, who have personal experience of dementia, this was often hard to read.
The story is written in two timelines – 2018 and 1951. As Edie remembers more snippets of information relating to her friendship with Lucy, what actually happened is revealed bit by bit through the flashbacks. I’m not always a fan of flashbacks, but this is different.
In 1951, Edie lives with her mum, who conducts séances and is a bit of a local celebrity, and her dreadful step-father Reg. What a horrible man! She attends the local school along with Lucy and wants to stay on and study so she can become a teacher. Only that wasn’t the usual path girls from families like hers took – they ended up working at the undergarment factory.
Lucy, on the other hand, comes from a well-off family – her father is the mayor – so why is she friends with Edie? Well, Edie knows Lucy’s secrets, so it’s a bit of a friendship of necessity on Lucy’s part, and flattery on Edie’s.
Such a beautiful, well-written story – I simply adored it.
Many thanks to @Tr4cyF3nt0n for inviting me to be part of the #CompulsiveReaders #blogtour and also to The Pigeonhole, the author and my fellow Pigeons for making this such an enjoyable read.
About the Author
Emily Critchley grew up in Essex. She has lived in Brighton and London and now lives in Hertfordshire where she works as a librarian. She has a first class BA in Creative Writing from London Metropolitan University and an MA with distinction in Creative Writing from Birkbeck University of London. Her YA debut Notes on my Family was nominated for the Carnegie, long listed for the Branford Boase, and book of the week in the Sunday Times, and her middle grade novel The Bear who Sailed the Ocean on an Iceberg was published in October 2021, both by independent publisher Everything With Words. One Puzzling Afternoon is her debut adult novel.
