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Enbury Heath
In her autobiographical novel Enbury Heath she describes her family life with two younger brothers, Gerald and Lewis, in the third person: "She grew up in the wreck of hope and the slow, strange living-death of love, but because she was conceived in love, she was the happiest of the three, and she never forgot it."
Her father was a "bad man, but a good doctor". Stella's mother Maudie was a retiring woman not able to stand up to the domineering spirit of her husband. Stella's father worked in a poor area of London and was a sympathetic doctor who would not charge patients that could not pay. Nevertheless, he was prone to violent outbursts against his wife and was a womaniser who was unfaithful with a number of governesses. In a fit of rage he once threw a knife at Maudie, and often resorted to whiskey and later laudanum to deal with his inner demons.
Her father was a "bad man, but a good doctor". Stella's mother Maudie was a retiring woman not able to stand up to the domineering spirit of her husband. Stella's father worked in a poor area of London and was a sympathetic doctor who would not charge patients that could not pay. Nevertheless, he was prone to violent outbursts against his wife and was a womaniser who was unfaithful with a number of governesses. In a fit of rage he once threw a knife at Maudie, and often resorted to whiskey and later laudanum to deal with his inner demons.
310 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1935
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201 people want to read
About the author
Stella Gibbons
57 books412 followersStella Dorothea Gibbons was an English novelist, journalist, poet and short-story writer.
Her first novel, Cold Comfort Farm, won the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize for 1933. A satire and parody of the pessimistic ruralism of Thomas Hardy, his followers and especially Precious Bain by Mary Webb -the "loam and lovechild" genre, as some called it, Cold Comfort Farm introduces a self-confident young woman, quite self-consciously modern, pragmatic and optimistic, into the grim, fate-bound and dark rural scene those novelists tended to portray.
Her first novel, Cold Comfort Farm, won the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize for 1933. A satire and parody of the pessimistic ruralism of Thomas Hardy, his followers and especially Precious Bain by Mary Webb -the "loam and lovechild" genre, as some called it, Cold Comfort Farm introduces a self-confident young woman, quite self-consciously modern, pragmatic and optimistic, into the grim, fate-bound and dark rural scene those novelists tended to portray.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
March 22, 2022
A gem. Thoroughly original too. Evokes the gentle and natural crumbling of an idyll, but not one that I'd ever really imagined before—one where 'children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, [who] have some means of enjoyment in thier power which no subsequent connections can supply' try and create a life of self-suffiency, diginity, and fun when their definitions of these things philsophically and fundamentally clash.
August 7, 2022
This review first appeared on my blog - https://nsfordwriter.com - on 3rd August 2022.
Published only 3 years after her debut, Cold Comfort Farm, this is a thinly-veiled autobiographical novel which is set in Enbury (i.e. Hampstead) in London. I've read most of her work now and this one is low in my ranking, but I do appreciate how Gibbons used the novel to explore her feelings about her turbulent early years.
The story follows young adults Sophia, Harry and Francis after the deaths of their parents. Their doctor father was an alcoholic and womaniser who made their home life a misery, while their mother was calm and mild. They seem to blame their father for her early death. While waiting for the doctor's surgery to be sold, the siblings move into a little old cottage on Enbury Heath and try to avoid the well-intentioned meddling of their aunts and uncles. Sophia is working for a newspaper, while Harry is an actor and Francis leaves school for office life. At first, they enjoy living in the cottage, but the housekeeping and managing servants falls to Sophia, who is also worried about the partying her brothers get up to. She dreads them following in their father's footsteps.
Having read this book and then about Stella Gibbons' life, this is so close to reality that it doesn't seem much like fiction. The writing is interesting at times, describing what it was like to be in your late teens and early twenties in 1930s London, for example. However, there is only a vague plot and the ending is very weak. Probably one for the Stella Gibbons completists.
Published only 3 years after her debut, Cold Comfort Farm, this is a thinly-veiled autobiographical novel which is set in Enbury (i.e. Hampstead) in London. I've read most of her work now and this one is low in my ranking, but I do appreciate how Gibbons used the novel to explore her feelings about her turbulent early years.
The story follows young adults Sophia, Harry and Francis after the deaths of their parents. Their doctor father was an alcoholic and womaniser who made their home life a misery, while their mother was calm and mild. They seem to blame their father for her early death. While waiting for the doctor's surgery to be sold, the siblings move into a little old cottage on Enbury Heath and try to avoid the well-intentioned meddling of their aunts and uncles. Sophia is working for a newspaper, while Harry is an actor and Francis leaves school for office life. At first, they enjoy living in the cottage, but the housekeeping and managing servants falls to Sophia, who is also worried about the partying her brothers get up to. She dreads them following in their father's footsteps.
Having read this book and then about Stella Gibbons' life, this is so close to reality that it doesn't seem much like fiction. The writing is interesting at times, describing what it was like to be in your late teens and early twenties in 1930s London, for example. However, there is only a vague plot and the ending is very weak. Probably one for the Stella Gibbons completists.
November 28, 2022
I wish I could give this more than 5 stars as I absolutely loved this semi-autobiographical novel that is about the time that she shared a cottage with her two brothers. It's a coming of age book and bittersweet at times but I adored it.
In Reggie Oliver's biography of Stella Gibbons Out Of The Woodshed: A Portrait Of Stella Gibbons he says "Enbury Heath is one of the bleakest and most vivid of all Stella's novels"
Also "The book suffers, as do many of Stella's later novels from an element of superfluity. Small incidents, and details of dress and decor are described at times with unnecessary minuteness."
But that's what I love best, her descriptions of the cottage and the heath, to me are exquisite.
Reading this made me feel cosy too.
I'm thoroughly enjoying catching up with Stella Gibbons - this is the 4th I've read this year.
In Reggie Oliver's biography of Stella Gibbons Out Of The Woodshed: A Portrait Of Stella Gibbons he says "Enbury Heath is one of the bleakest and most vivid of all Stella's novels"
Also "The book suffers, as do many of Stella's later novels from an element of superfluity. Small incidents, and details of dress and decor are described at times with unnecessary minuteness."
But that's what I love best, her descriptions of the cottage and the heath, to me are exquisite.
Reading this made me feel cosy too.
I'm thoroughly enjoying catching up with Stella Gibbons - this is the 4th I've read this year.
June 29, 2025
A comfort read.
July 6, 2023
A semi-autobiographical account of Stella Gibbons' childhood and youth living with her two brothers in London. What a romantic idea - three young siblings living together with zero parental influence in a cute house on the heath, full autonomy of what they do and how they spend their time and money. What could go wrong? Stella (/Sophia) struggles with the pressure of being the serious, older sibling, worrying about the futures and the brothers' increasing likeliness to their late father. I like the way Stella Gibbons writes, less parody than Cold Comfort Farm, but equally witty. But why at the end is she so touched by receiving only 10% of the inheritance??
January 14, 2015
Somewhat melancholy but still has a lot of the usual Gibbon charm. (And do we wonder if Philip Larkin had read this! - it certainly resonates with one of his two most famous lines, and not the one about sexual intercourse beginning in 1963...)
July 14, 2022
A beautiful and well written book, funny, moving and evocative, a real gem.
September 9, 2022
Bitter sweet. Beautifully written.
July 18, 2023
Another completely absorbing read from Stella Gibbons whose North London world I find irresistible.
Young Sophia tries to create an orderly and peaceful home for herself and her brothers in a tiny two room cottage in the Vale of Health. Her very modest plans however are slowly eroded by her brothers' love of parties, women, alcohol, staying up late and drink driving. Beady eyed relatives snoop around and Sophia must escape first one oppressive role and then another.
In this novel Gibbons examines how young people's lives go from freedom to responsibility as each fresh burden is hung upon them. The challenges of work, paying rent, budgeting, handling temptation and the limits of our care for others seem to be the main themes. If it sounds outwardly a bit grim and dreary then Gibbons's wicked sense of humour cuts through with some fantastic characters and unexpected events.
I like Gibbons's work because it captures so well the awkwardness of being young and naive and the difficulties of trying to make a satisfying life. And she's funny.
Young Sophia tries to create an orderly and peaceful home for herself and her brothers in a tiny two room cottage in the Vale of Health. Her very modest plans however are slowly eroded by her brothers' love of parties, women, alcohol, staying up late and drink driving. Beady eyed relatives snoop around and Sophia must escape first one oppressive role and then another.
In this novel Gibbons examines how young people's lives go from freedom to responsibility as each fresh burden is hung upon them. The challenges of work, paying rent, budgeting, handling temptation and the limits of our care for others seem to be the main themes. If it sounds outwardly a bit grim and dreary then Gibbons's wicked sense of humour cuts through with some fantastic characters and unexpected events.
I like Gibbons's work because it captures so well the awkwardness of being young and naive and the difficulties of trying to make a satisfying life. And she's funny.
April 9, 2025
I’m sure this a reflection of the time but I found all three main characters to be extremely unlikeable, especially the brothers - snobby, constantly looking down on people around them and in many ways very privileged. I think the book attempts to explore the complexities of characters and why they act the way they do but they have so little self awareness that it sometimes falls flat. The description is lovely though and it was also a cozy read
October 9, 2024
Originally published in 1935, Enbury Heath is a semi-autobiographical account of the years Stella Gibbons (author of the much-loved Cold Comfort Farm) spent living in a cottage on Hampstead Heath with her two brothers, Gerald and Lewis. The Gibbons siblings lost both parents within the space of six months, and while their mother’s death was sudden, their father’s demise from alcohol-related heart disease may have been brewing for a while. With her youngest brother, Lewis, still in school and Gerald intermittently working as an actor, Stella became the family’s main breadwinner, and it is against this backdrop that the fictional Enbury Heath is set. This is a charming, bittersweet novel about family dynamics and the challenges of growing up, all laced with Gibbons’ sharp but engaging humour.
The novel revolves around three siblings – twenty-one-year-old Sophia Garden, a thoughtful, responsible young woman who works as a writer at a Canadian news agency, and her younger brothers, Harry and Francis. While Harry tries to pick up work as a jobbing actor, Francis is finishing up at school and is eager to move on.
Sophia judged the visible world very harshly and liked nothing better than to escape into her private world of dreams. As for love, she hardly thought about it; and normal girls of twenty usually think about it a great deal. Harry was so calmly sure that his beauty would win him fame and the worship of thousands of girls that he never thought about hard work and perseverance. Francis liked to dramatize his feelings and feel fierce and lone-wolfish; he enjoyed disliking people, especially relations. And all three were as moody, sensitive and quick-witted as show cats; they had hardly any of the virtues which would fit them for citizenship in a brave new world. (p. 20)
As the story opens, the siblings’ father and recent widower, Hartley Garden, has just died, leaving the children on their own. Hartley, we soon learn, was a relatively successful doctor in the local community but a terrible father, largely due to his vanity, ambition and cruelty, not to mention his tendency to drink. While the Garden siblings loved their late mother dearly, they had little time for Hartley and are secretly (and sometimes openly) relieved at his death.
Gibbons spends considerable time introducing us to these characters and setting up the siblings’ move to Hampstead Heath. Firstly, there is Hartley’s funeral to be dealt with, a dreadful affair presided over by a coterie of ghastly Garden relatives, most of who seem intent on interfering with the siblings’ lives. Chief amongst these is Uncle Preston, surely one of Gibbons’ greatest comic creations, but more of him later…
Then there is the reading of Hartley’s will, which surprises everyone when Francis unveils a previously unknown but perfectly valid version of the will, stating that Harry is to inherit everything. Harry, however, is happy to share the windfall with his siblings once he comes of age. Before then, there are considerable debts to be paid, meaning the children are likely to inherit two or three thousand pounds at most once their father’s surgery has been sold. In the meantime, Mr Marriot, the Garden family’s solicitor, will give Harry a small allowance on which to live.
Through her friend, Celia, Sophia finds a cottage for the siblings to rent. It’s situated in the Vale, Enbury Heath, a part of London that Sophia loves, and while the property itself is small, The Cottage has its own peculiar appeal.
It was called The Cottage, The Vale, Enbury Heath. An odd, self-contained, lovable little house, thought Sophia, who was one of the people who fall in love with places as well as with persons, and rather more easily… (p. 89)
All seems fine at first. Sophia enjoys decorating the cottage, and the three siblings are happy to be sharing a place together. Naturally, Uncle Preston and the other dreadful relatives disapprove of the whole thing and remain convinced that the children will get into debt or make a terrible mess of it all without their help – except Uncle Preston’s wife, Auntie Loo, who seems kind and supportive.
The whole crew of relations from Uncle Preston to Angela meanwhile rang up almost every evening to enquire, warn, admonish, coo and say that they simply must come over and see the house. They were all, except Auntie Loo, hoping that the children would make a shocking mess of the housekeeping, and their telephone calls were in the nature of vulture-like hoverings and anticipations over what they hoped would soon be a carcass. (pp. 130–131)
As the weeks pass, it soon becomes clear that the siblings are looking for different things out of life. With her love of routine and order, Sophia wants nothing more than for the three of them to settle down to orderly lives. The terrible misery of growing up under Hartley’s gaze is all in the past, but as far as Sophia sees it, the children must now live within their means and plan for the future. Harry, on the other hand, is intent on enjoying life to the full. Having secured a stint as an assistant stage manager and a small part in a play, Harry falls in with the theatre crowd, regularly inviting them back to the cottage for parties he can ill afford to fund. Meanwhile, Francis is finding his feet as an office boy in the chalk business, a job secured for him by Uncle Preston.
To read the rest of my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2024...
The novel revolves around three siblings – twenty-one-year-old Sophia Garden, a thoughtful, responsible young woman who works as a writer at a Canadian news agency, and her younger brothers, Harry and Francis. While Harry tries to pick up work as a jobbing actor, Francis is finishing up at school and is eager to move on.
Sophia judged the visible world very harshly and liked nothing better than to escape into her private world of dreams. As for love, she hardly thought about it; and normal girls of twenty usually think about it a great deal. Harry was so calmly sure that his beauty would win him fame and the worship of thousands of girls that he never thought about hard work and perseverance. Francis liked to dramatize his feelings and feel fierce and lone-wolfish; he enjoyed disliking people, especially relations. And all three were as moody, sensitive and quick-witted as show cats; they had hardly any of the virtues which would fit them for citizenship in a brave new world. (p. 20)
As the story opens, the siblings’ father and recent widower, Hartley Garden, has just died, leaving the children on their own. Hartley, we soon learn, was a relatively successful doctor in the local community but a terrible father, largely due to his vanity, ambition and cruelty, not to mention his tendency to drink. While the Garden siblings loved their late mother dearly, they had little time for Hartley and are secretly (and sometimes openly) relieved at his death.
Gibbons spends considerable time introducing us to these characters and setting up the siblings’ move to Hampstead Heath. Firstly, there is Hartley’s funeral to be dealt with, a dreadful affair presided over by a coterie of ghastly Garden relatives, most of who seem intent on interfering with the siblings’ lives. Chief amongst these is Uncle Preston, surely one of Gibbons’ greatest comic creations, but more of him later…
Then there is the reading of Hartley’s will, which surprises everyone when Francis unveils a previously unknown but perfectly valid version of the will, stating that Harry is to inherit everything. Harry, however, is happy to share the windfall with his siblings once he comes of age. Before then, there are considerable debts to be paid, meaning the children are likely to inherit two or three thousand pounds at most once their father’s surgery has been sold. In the meantime, Mr Marriot, the Garden family’s solicitor, will give Harry a small allowance on which to live.
Through her friend, Celia, Sophia finds a cottage for the siblings to rent. It’s situated in the Vale, Enbury Heath, a part of London that Sophia loves, and while the property itself is small, The Cottage has its own peculiar appeal.
It was called The Cottage, The Vale, Enbury Heath. An odd, self-contained, lovable little house, thought Sophia, who was one of the people who fall in love with places as well as with persons, and rather more easily… (p. 89)
All seems fine at first. Sophia enjoys decorating the cottage, and the three siblings are happy to be sharing a place together. Naturally, Uncle Preston and the other dreadful relatives disapprove of the whole thing and remain convinced that the children will get into debt or make a terrible mess of it all without their help – except Uncle Preston’s wife, Auntie Loo, who seems kind and supportive.
The whole crew of relations from Uncle Preston to Angela meanwhile rang up almost every evening to enquire, warn, admonish, coo and say that they simply must come over and see the house. They were all, except Auntie Loo, hoping that the children would make a shocking mess of the housekeeping, and their telephone calls were in the nature of vulture-like hoverings and anticipations over what they hoped would soon be a carcass. (pp. 130–131)
As the weeks pass, it soon becomes clear that the siblings are looking for different things out of life. With her love of routine and order, Sophia wants nothing more than for the three of them to settle down to orderly lives. The terrible misery of growing up under Hartley’s gaze is all in the past, but as far as Sophia sees it, the children must now live within their means and plan for the future. Harry, on the other hand, is intent on enjoying life to the full. Having secured a stint as an assistant stage manager and a small part in a play, Harry falls in with the theatre crowd, regularly inviting them back to the cottage for parties he can ill afford to fund. Meanwhile, Francis is finding his feet as an office boy in the chalk business, a job secured for him by Uncle Preston.
To read the rest of my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2024...
December 20, 2022
Borderline 4 stars. Really it was 3.5, as very well-written, touching and amusing with some well-drawn characters and good character insights, but ultimately it doesn't amount to very much beyond a semi-autobiographical snapshot of Gibbons' own early life.
September 23, 2021
In spite of her many responsibilities at this time, Sophia was happy.
Her situation did not include many of the things which make most human beings happy, for she was poor, she was not in love and had no one in love with her, she was not pretty nor admired, she was usually exhausted from overwork and felt vaguely ill from the pressure of her own nervous energies, lingering grief for her mother, and from the deeply rooted misery which had struck into her nature during her childhood.
Nevertheless she enjoyed almost every moment of her day. She had learned, at an early age, to ignore the protests made by a tired body; this is a valuable lesson, which often serves to develop the senses of hearing, smell and taste, and to make them vivid, and obedient to the demands of her intelligence. As for her eyes - what delight they gave her! ravaging a room, a face, a landscape like buccaneers, and sending back to her brain great loads of loot.
Vintage Classics has just brought Enbury Heath (1935) back into print, and it immediately caught my eye when I realised (courtesy of the blurb on the back cover) that it is a "semi-autobiographical account of the years that Stella Gibbons and her brothers spent in a cottage in Hampstead Heath." Any novel set in or around Hampstead, in north London, is of special interest to me, but my love of biography means that I particularly enjoy novels which I know parallel real life. Gibbons' biographer, her nephew Reggie Oliver, has been quoted as saying that the novel is a "relatively faithful account of her childhood and early adult life" with "only the thinnest veil of fictional gauze cover[ing] raw experience."
The book begins with the death of Hartley Garden - "a bad man but a good doctor" - and the difficult father of Sophia, Harry and Francis Garden. Due to her mother's death, and the strained family atmosphere, Sophia has already been living in a rented room at this time, even though she is a young unmarried woman. She has been working as a fledgling journalist at the Canadian News Agency (the British United Press news agency in real life), and writing poetry in her spare time. After a surprising reading of their father's will, Francis (the youngest sibling, only 16) decides to leave school and become an office boy instead. With Harry employed as a part-time actor, the three siblings decide to club together and rent a home - and this they manage to do, with the help of Sophia's friend Celia, and despite some opposition from the Garden family relatives.
A period of happiness and apparent prosperity now set in for the inhabitants of the cottage. It may be compared to that burst of radiant hot weather which precedes a thunderstorm.
The rented home is a cottage in the Vale of Health, surrounded by Hampstead Heath. Sophia, who is extremely responsive to the quiet beauties of nature, hopes that she will be able to unite her siblings into "a life of orderly and pleasant routine." Unfortunately, neither of her brothers are keen on being managed in any way, and when they discover beer, girls and parties, the freedom afforded by a cottage means that the siblings become increasingly incompatible as housemates. The book spans a time of about 6 months, and it is really about the making and then breaking up of a temporary home. It is about that brief stage when one is just on the cusp of adulthood.
Gibbons is so good on detail, and I lapped up her descriptive and atmospheric writing style. I've always been interested in that tumultuous period between the two world wars, and dotted throughout this novel are fascinating details of the economic and political ferment of the time.
Yet one could not ignore the misery on the earth; the North of England in the frost of industrial decline, violence and starvation in Europe, America staggering like a wounded golden giant.
Gibbons is especially good on class, too, and the book is faithful to the attitudes of that period - even when they do grate on a more modern sensibility. There are lively characterisations, too - which might sometimes border a bit on caricature. The extended Garden family offers much scope for Garden's pen, as do other characters like Francis's girlfriend, Harry's rich Argentinian friend, the bright young things who come to the Garden's parties and the inadequate domestic help that Sophia is gulled into employing. Moments of psychological insight give the book some depth, though, and altogether it was an enjoyable story about family life and the pains of growing up.
A few favourite quotations:
So many things bewildered Uncle Preston, who suffered from a permanent sense of grievance because events and persons would not fit into the frame through which he looked at life.
She sipped her team, took a bite of bread and butter, smelled the narcissus, turned a page, listened to the stillness, gratifying as many of her senses as possible at the same time.
July 31, 2022
Classic Stella Gibbons, always enjoyable.
July 23, 2023
I can only give this 3 stars. I have read many of Stella Gibbon’s novels and have several more to go, and I’m determined to go through her entire oeuvre...but this one was a slog for the most part. If you’re a Stella Gibbons fan, it’s worth the read....there are several interesting characters in it. But for first timers, I would recommend ‘Cold Comfort Farm’ (of course!), ‘The Snow Woman’ (1968), ‘Westwood’ (1946), ‘Starlight’ (1967),and ‘A Pink Front Door’ (1959).
Synopsis:
• Siblings Sophia, Harry and Francis have lost both their parents in the last 6 months. Attending the funeral for their estranged father, they are surprised to learn what they have inherited. But when they decide to build a home together in Enbury Heath, they discover that money is not the only legacy that will test their loyalties to each other.
• Originally published in 1935. Enbury Heath is a semi-autobiographical account of the years that Stella Gibbons and her brothers spent in a cottage in Hampstead Heath. An astute, bittersweet novel about the bonds of family, the pains of growing up and the unexpected pleasures of London.
She wrote this 3 years after Cold Comfort Farm was published. My copy is from Vintage Classics which re-issued a number of her novels including ‘The Matchmaker’, ‘Westwood, ‘Here Be Dragons’, and ‘Pure Juliet’.
Reviews:
• https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2022/...
• https://www.stuckinabook.com/enbury-h...
• https://nsfordwriter.com/enbury-heath...
Synopsis:
• Siblings Sophia, Harry and Francis have lost both their parents in the last 6 months. Attending the funeral for their estranged father, they are surprised to learn what they have inherited. But when they decide to build a home together in Enbury Heath, they discover that money is not the only legacy that will test their loyalties to each other.
• Originally published in 1935. Enbury Heath is a semi-autobiographical account of the years that Stella Gibbons and her brothers spent in a cottage in Hampstead Heath. An astute, bittersweet novel about the bonds of family, the pains of growing up and the unexpected pleasures of London.
She wrote this 3 years after Cold Comfort Farm was published. My copy is from Vintage Classics which re-issued a number of her novels including ‘The Matchmaker’, ‘Westwood, ‘Here Be Dragons’, and ‘Pure Juliet’.
Reviews:
• https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2022/...
• https://www.stuckinabook.com/enbury-h...
• https://nsfordwriter.com/enbury-heath...
January 12, 2025
Stella Gibbons' writing is very special. She imbues her characters with depth; they have charm, they have foibles, they have failings. Very human, in fact, not just two dimensional creations that sit on the page.
Her turns of phrase approach the poetic, but in a wonderfully weird way at times. Another author might make a meal of this, but Gibbon's touch is gentle.
It only took me so long to finish this book as I have been through a MASSIVE reading slump and this book was the unfortunate victim. But I intend to read more Gibbons, to explore beyond the well-worn track of Cold Comfort Farm, much as I love that book.
Her turns of phrase approach the poetic, but in a wonderfully weird way at times. Another author might make a meal of this, but Gibbon's touch is gentle.
It only took me so long to finish this book as I have been through a MASSIVE reading slump and this book was the unfortunate victim. But I intend to read more Gibbons, to explore beyond the well-worn track of Cold Comfort Farm, much as I love that book.
December 1, 2024
I really enjoyed this. I would have liked to know what happened next. Sophia’s fears for her brothers were probably well-founded and while separating somewhat helped her I’m worried for the boys. M
There is a lot of very interesting stuff in this autobiographical story, especially about the effects of growing up with a violent alcoholic father.
Stella Gibbons’ take on the world is always from a slightly new angle and I found a lot of quotable wisdom in this book.
There is a lot of very interesting stuff in this autobiographical story, especially about the effects of growing up with a violent alcoholic father.
Stella Gibbons’ take on the world is always from a slightly new angle and I found a lot of quotable wisdom in this book.
February 2, 2025
A story of youth
The standard of writing in this autobiographical novel is very high and a pleasure to read. Quite rare to come across genuine wire and a love of words.
It tells the story of a year in the author’s life.
She is a sensible person with two feckless brothers who live together for a year after their father dies.
It all ends in tears, which it was bound to.
A pleasure to read.
The standard of writing in this autobiographical novel is very high and a pleasure to read. Quite rare to come across genuine wire and a love of words.
It tells the story of a year in the author’s life.
She is a sensible person with two feckless brothers who live together for a year after their father dies.
It all ends in tears, which it was bound to.
A pleasure to read.
June 5, 2025
Engaging social comedy with poignant ending.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews