Question E

[Tracey]

Nolly Grant, the eldest of the Bassington-Hope children, is rude and dismissive when she meets Maisie, and she is generally seen as the odd person out in her family. How, despite these facts, does Winspear create sympathy for this initially cold and off-putting character?

[Kris (My Novelesque Life)]

She is the eldest in the family and is always looking out for everyone and has lost her husband to the war. Nolly doesn't have the artist way like her family so we feel sympathy for her being an outsider and trying to hold it all together.

[Tracey]

Yes I think Nolly losing her husband to the war creates sympathy from the reader. Also she seems like she is really trying to future proof the family and house by trying to be commercial about it all.

[Kris (My Novelesque Life)]

Great point, Tracey.