This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing
Jacqueline Winspear
ISBN: 9781641292696
Published: November 3, 2020
Pricing
Hardcover $27.95
More books by Jacqueline Winspear
Description
The New York Times bestselling author of the Maisie Dobbs series offers a deeply personal memoir of her Kentish childhood and her family’s resilience in the face of war and privation.
After sixteen novels, Jacqueline Winspear has taken the bold step of turning to memoir, revealing the hardships and joys of h...
The New York Times bestselling author of the Maisie Dobbs series offers a deeply personal memoir of her Kentish childhood and her family’s resilience in the face of war and privation.
After sixteen novels, Jacqueline Winspear has taken the bold step of turning to memoir, revealing the hardships and joys of her family history. Both shockingly frank and deftly restrained, her memoir tackles such difficult, poignant, and fascinating family memories as her paternal grandfather’s shellshock, her mother’s evacuation from London during the Blitz; her soft-spoken animal-loving father’s torturous assignment to an explosives team during WWII; her parents’ years living with Romani Gypsies; and Jacqueline’s own childhood working on farms in rural Kent, capturing her ties to the land and her dream of being a writer at its very inception.
An eye-opening and heartfelt portrayal of a post-War England we rarely see, This Time Next Year We’ll Be Laughing is the story of a childhood in the English countryside, of working class indomitability and family secrets, of artistic inspiration and the price of memory.
Media
“This is a memoir both evocative and unflinching. Without a trace of self-pity, Jacqueline Winspear portrays a childhood of rural poverty overcome by hard manual labor, lifelong love amid emotional wounds, and a profound understanding of how 'the gift of place' creates meaning . . . An illuminating portrait of a time and place that is as optimistic as it is deeply moving. ”
—Sally Bedell Smith, author of Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life, on This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing
“Jacqueline Winspear's memoir takes the reader through the early and adolescent years of the author's life as well as the history of her parents' young marriage in a fashion that is simultaneously endearing, touching, amusing, heartfelt, and astonishing . . . It's a love letter and a beautiful work of gratitude toward the people and the place that made the author what and who she is.”
—Elizabeth George on This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing
“[Winspear] draws distinctive portraits of postwar England, altogether different from the U.S., where she has since settled, and her unsettling struggles within the rigid British class system. An engaging childhood memoir and a deeply affectionate tribute to the author’s parents.”
—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review (for This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing)
“Jacqueline Winspear has created a memoir of her English childhood that is every bit as engaging as her Maisie Dobbs novels, just as rich in character and detail, history and humanity. Her writing is lovely, elegant and welcoming.”
—Anne Lamott, on This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing
“This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing is a beautifully rendered, elegant work of literary architecture joining the present to the past. Jacqueline Winspear's memoir of an English country childhood is also an homage to the remarkable parents whose choices and outlooks shaped her. Their stories of hardship and gratitude became hers, and hers became this unforgettable book. ”
—Hope Edelman, New York Times bestselling author of Motherless Daughters and The Aftergrief
“A fascinating picture of life in England at the dawn of war . . . Resourceful Maisie remains an endearingly complex character. ”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune, on a Maisie Dobbs book
“History comes alive when a character you think of as a friend is in the thick of the action. ”