The Companion
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
The Companion is a beautiful and powerfully-told story of buried secrets and unsolved murder, set between the 1930s and the present day, on the wild Yorkshire moors.
'Utterly charming, wonderfully creepy and rich with mystery. The Companion is a rare treat.' CL Taylor, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Escape
Billy Shaw lives in a palace. Potter's Pleasure Palace, the best entertainment venue in Yorkshire, complete with dancing, swing-boats and a roller-skating rink.
When it is arranged for him to become companion to the child at the big house above the valley, Billy leaves home to find a wild, peculiar boy in a curiously haphazard household where nothing that's meant is said and the air is thick with secrets. Before long, tragedy strikes and facts become entangled with fictions. It's left to Anna Sallis, almost a century later, to unravel the knots and find the truth.
'An absorbing mystery story, really evocative of the Yorkshire Moors and the mill. I loved the character of Billy Shaw! The story kept me engrossed and flipping the pages right to the end' Katherine Webb, bestselling author of The Legacy
'The Companion is beautifully written and so evocative of time and place...If you thought the Brontes were the most intriguing literary family in Yorkshire, wait until you meet the Harpers' Linda Green, author of the No.1 bestseller, While My Eyes Were Closed
'Sarah writes with warmth, wit and wisdom AND she makes you want to turn the page. A rare combination' John Humphrys
Customer Reviews
A picture painted with words
This book is a picture painted with words, incorporating some of the most beautifully descriptive writing I've ever read.
The story flows in two parts: in 1932, 11-year-old Billy Shaw is sent to live with the wayward Jasper Harper, together with Jasper's mother and uncle, up on the windswept moor above Billy's beloved Ackerdean Mill – the entertainment palace where he grew up; in the present day, Anna Sallis is the recently appointed custodian of the Ackerdean Mill archive, where her job is to organise the decades-old records into some semblance of order. As Billy's story unfolds, so does Anna's discovery of the story behind a double suicide, and the truth behind the very many secrets – both past and present – that have long overshadowed the valley.
There was nothing about this book I didn't like – the story kept pulling me back, despite all the other things I was supposed to be doing. Sarah Dunnakey writes with a prose that slaps the wind against your face, and litters your ears with the cries of curlews.
As an aside, the author's description of Ackerdean Mill and its environs instantly brought to mind a former mill, now owned by the National Trust, that I visited a few years ago. On reading the notes at the end of the book, I discovered this was the very place Dunnakey used for inspiration. Her descriptions are that good.