It's a pleasure to take part in the Blogtour The Night in Question by Susan Fletcher.
*From the literary award winning, bestselling and critically acclaimed novelist Susan Fletcher comes a novel about the richness and adventures of one woman’s life – a joyful, brave, unconventional life, brimming with love and loss in all its forms.*
About the Author
Susan Fletcher was born in Birmingham and studied English Literature at the University of York.
Whilst taking the MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, she began her first novel, Eve Green, which won the Whitbread First Novel Award (2004) and Betty Trask Prize (2005). Since then, Susan has written seven novels - whilst also supplementing her writing through various roles, including as a barperson, a cheesemonger and a warden for an archaeological excavation site near Hadrian's Wall. Most recently, she has been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Worcester. She lives in Warwickshire. Follow @sfletcherauthor on X
#“Florrie knows that love, the proper, deep, extraordinary kind – is not about you. Real love is about them, always – about the person who you love above all others, whose happiness you long for above all other things. With love, you want the best for them. You want their contentment, their safety. You want them to laugh freely, to dance, to live a long, healthy life of joy and gratitude – even if this happens away from you, even if your beloved never knows your name. For that person you’d deny yourself a thousand things in your own life if it meant they had just one of them – just one.
For one has, with love, the curious notion that you can pass on your own allowance of happiness to them, in some fashion, as if bequeathing pennies that you’d rather they spent, not you.” - Joy? Here. Have all of mine.
Review
I think this author has a particular strength when it comes to creating characters the reader becomes invested in. Deeper emotional connections, perhaps because the characters resonate with a specific part of our experiences or our frame of references.
This time the characters and story is woven together with a potential mystery at the core. It allows for a greater exploration of love, life, both lived and lost. In a sense the inner core, when you move through the forest of suspicion and questions, is about the beginning and the end - a path well travelled.
I loved the way this story became an multi genre experience with a literary vibe. The descriptive prose evokes poetic imagery, which is then drawn in a direct contrast to the ageing in Florrie. Knowing that her vivacious and colourful journey is slowing down and declining. Her health and changes that come with aging have become a burden that attracts vicious tongues, and yet despite all that she lives in a world that sees the beauty and joy in the fleeting moments.
I enjoyed the read - will we hear more from Florrie? Or is the path to the end exactly what the readers want for her. It's a story that travels smoothly from present to past and back again, and sometimes part of that past clings tightly to the travelling ever evolving memory.
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