The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir
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3.8 • 16 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
‘The writing glows with emotional intelligence. This atmospheric debut…had me sniffing copiously’ Daily Mail
IN WARTIME, SURVIVAL IS AS MUCH ABOUT FRIENDSHIP AS IT IS ABOUT COURAGE…
Kent, 1940. In the idyllic village of Chilbury change is afoot. Hearts are breaking as sons and husbands leave to fight, and when the Vicar decides to close the choir until the men return, all seems lost.
But coming together in song is just what the women of Chilbury need in these dark hours, and they are ready to sing. With a little fighting spirit and the arrival of a new musical resident, the charismatic Miss Primrose Trent, the choir is reborn.
Some see the choir as a chance to forget their troubles, others the chance to shine. Though for one villager, the choir is the perfect cover to destroy Chilbury’s new-found harmony…
An uplifting and heart-warming novel perfect for fans of Helen Simonson’s The Summer before the War and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.
Reviews
‘The writing glows with emotional intelligence. This atmospheric debut, based on the author’s own family history, had me sniffing copiously’ Daily Mail
‘I am completely and utterly in love with this book. What a joy! It may be in my all-time top five – I just adore every single thing about it’ JILL MANSELL
‘Lyrical, poetic, emotional, funny, endearing, surprising – it is a masterpiece’ VERONICA HENRY author of How to Find Love in a Book Shop
‘I adored it, it made me want to sing with joy’ ALEX BROWN, author of The Secret of Orchard Cottage
‘Delightful… it manages to be sad and funny, exciting and heart-warming, all at the same time. Quite an achievement’
BARBARA ERSKINE author of Sleeper’s Castle
‘I adored The Chilbury Ladies' Choir! The pages sing with such wonderful characters, and through them wartime England really comes alive. Warm, witty, touching and uplifting, I will be recommending this to all my friends’ HAZEL GAYNOR author of The Girl from the Savoy
About the author
Jennifer Ryan is originally from Kent and now lives in the Washington, DC area with her husband and two children. She was previously a nonfiction book editor.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1940, at a time when women's roles were still firmly rooted in home and hearth, the ladies of Chilbury, England, find themselves at the bleeding edge of progress as the ramifications of World War II begin to infiltrate their little town. The men of Chilbury head to battlefields, and the village choir becomes the first casualty of the war. When a female professor of music insists the choir can be reassembled as a ladies' choir, the small community is at first scandalized by such an idea. But this is soon lost to other more salacious events. There is the brigadier who hires an unscrupulous midwife to swap his baby girl for a boy, and his teenage daughter seduces a handsome artist who's come to town under mysterious circumstances. An upstanding single woman (a widow whose only son has gone to fight) is tapped to take a colonel into her home, and a 10-year-old Czech evacuee finds out what happened to her family. As the war advances on Chilbury, even more lives are changed when a German bomb kills a young mother as well as the choir mistress, young men are sent off to war, and spies and black market profiteers lurk in the quiet lanes. Told in the form of diaries and letters in the voices of the female characters, Ryan's novel, reminiscent of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, captures the experience of the war from a woman's perspective. Readers may have come across this kind of story before, but the letter/diary format works well and the plot elements satisfyingly come together.
