I connected with rising star Rachel Malik on Facebook Group Book Connectors. Since then I’ve enjoyed her posts on Twitter @rachelmalik99 and shared her love of Daphne du Maurier on instagram. It was one of her Instagram posts that inspired me to reread Rebecca before picking up Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves.
An Original Work Of Literary Fiction
There are times when it is unfair to a contemporary author to read their book immediately after a modern classic. This wasn’t the case with Rachel Malik’s debut novel. The writing is sharp, confident and pleasingly challenging. The reader is engaged and included in analysing the emerging relationship between Berkshire farmer Elsie Boston and her newly arrived Mancunian Land Girl Rene Hargreaves during the early part of World War II and ends after a courtroom drama in 1950s West Country.
The Plot
Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves, begins in 1940, travels back to 1913 and forwards into the 1950s. It is a fiction drawn from the black sheep of the author’s family. An ordinary woman who left her husband and three children before the outbreak of war. The recreation of the land and being part of the English countryside is an almost constant. Creating stark contrast to the wet streets of Winchester during the trial. The relationship between Elsie and Rene unfolds but it isn’t a kiss and tell story. It’s subtle, distant and removed at times whilst layering intimate details that leaves rooms for the reader’s own imagination.
I knew there was going to be a courtroom drama in the book, but when it would come I couldn’t be certain. With every twist and turn of the novel I felt myself wondering, “is this it?” and willing that no harm would come to the unpolished but gentle Elsie and the unconventional industrious Rene. When it did come it was a bolt out of the blue, but I found myself glad feeling that the worst moments I’d suffered as a reader were over, even though the characters troubles were no-where near ended.
I spent one evening in bed unable to turn off the light and stop reading; half-gripped and half in horror of the visitor trespassing into the order and companionship of the “maidenly ladies” secluded home. I couldn’t let sleep come until the crisis came to its climax.
I enjoyed the characters memories of the earliest twentieth century and warmed to Elsie’s longest and enduring love of the silver screen. Like a detective I was on constantly on the look out for signs that the past was catching up with them. Wary and yet excited by the arrival of new characters in large hats, glasses or offering lifts in passing motor cars.
Rachel Malik’s debut novel skillfully and successfully creates a fiction that is both fascinating and unsettling yet full of tenderness and devotion.
Literary Acclaim for the Author
Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves is on the long-list for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Rachel Malik is currently one of four authors to win a place as Writer in Residence at The Gladstone Library, Hawarden, Wales for 2018. She was a lecturer in English Literature at Middlesex University and lives in London.
Reviewed by Author Amy Beeson
5 Stars All Round
My mum, author Sarah Beeson also read the book and thought it was, ‘Touching and enthralling, a story seemingly domestic and everyday which unfolds captivating her reader, thoroughly recommend Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves.’
Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves by Rachel Malik is published by Penguin, Fig Tree and is available in hardback, paperback and ebook.