The Brondesbury Tapestry

by Helen Harris

Six women and one man gather in a community centre in North London for a life writing class run by Dorothy, their uniquely unqualified teacher. They have urgent stories to tell and, as they recount them, they discover they are connected in unexpected ways.

There is Iris, eighty years old but still with a taste for younger men; Pearl single-handedly bringing up her grandson, enigmatic hooded Kai; elusive Renee; Sabine whose happy Belgian childhood may not have been as happy as it sounds; mixed-up Esther; Edgar whose winning ways charm them all and of course there is Enid, the retired art teacher, who insists on telling her story in pictures not words.

Illustrated with sharp line drawings by illustrator Beatrice Baumgartner-Cohen, The Brondesbury Tapestry is a quirky, perceptive look at a group of people who feel the modern world has left them behind but who have decided that they will still have the last word.

352 pages, Paperback

First published May 10, 2018

About the author

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Since 1978, Helen Harris has published many short stories in a wide variety of magazines and anthologies. Magazines include:- London Magazine, Encounter, Punch, Good Housekeeping, Woman’s Journal and Company.
She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London, from 2008 till present.

Novels
Playing Fields in Winter (Century 1986. ISBN: 0-7126-9408-0) Winner of the Author’s Club First Novel Award, shortlisted for the Betty Trask prize
Angel Cake (Century 1987. ISBN 0-7126-1588-1) Serialized on BBC Radio Four in 1994
The Steppes of Paris (Hodder & Stoughton 1990. ISBN 0-340-51337-3)
The Weather Indoors (Arena 2002) published in Dutch as De Schrijfclub
Sylvia Garland's Broken Heart (Halban Publishers 2014. ISBN 9781905559701)
The Brondesbury Tapestry (Halban Publishers 2018 ISBN 9781905559909)

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Initially, I was attracted by the cover with its very pretty needlework design, as well as the word 'tapestry' in it's title. As a needlewoman myself, I am sure you can appreciate my original interest and surprise, as when I started reading I realised that both of these descriptors are the perfect metaphor for this story as they represent the coming together of stories that the characters in this book bring to the narrative.

For my full review please visit my blog at: https://leftontheshelfbookblog.blogsp...

[Deb Kingston · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a toss up between 21/2 🌟 or 3 🌟. I ended up going for three because I liked the concept of the story and a couple of the characters were interesting, but I felt the life stories let the book down as well as the ending.