Journal Entry 1 by Caroley from Birmingham, West Midlands United Kingdom on Friday, January 08, 2010

Olive Wellwood is a famous writer, interviewed with her children gathered at her knee. For each of them she writes a separate private book, bound in different colours and placed on a shelf. In their rambling house near Romney Marsh they play in a story-book world - but their lives, and those of their rich cousins, children of a city stockbroker, and their friends, the son and daughter of a curator at the new Victoria and Albert Museum, are already inscribed with mystery. Each family carries their own secrets.
Into their world comes a young stranger, a working-class boy from the potteries, drawn by the beauty of the Museum’s treasures. And in midsummer a German puppeteer arrives, bringing dark dramas. The world seems full of promise but the calm is already rocked by political differences, by Fabian arguments about class and free love, by the idealism of anarchists from Russia and Germany. The sons rebel against their parents’ plans; the girls dream of independent futures, becoming doctors or fighting for the vote.
This vivid, rich and moving saga is played out against the great, rippling tides of the day, taking us from the Kent marshes to Paris and Munich and the trenches of the Somme. Born at the end of the Victorian era, growing up in the golden summers of Edwardian times, a whole generation were heading for the darkness ahead; in their innocence, they were betrayed unintentionally by the adults who loved them. 

Journal Entry 2 by Caroley at Birmingham, West Midlands United Kingdom on Monday, July 05, 2010

I've just spent the last four days completely obsessed with this book. It is huge. The print is small. It's a slow read. And I've been completely unable to put it down. Four days. My husband has given up trying to make conversation.
I've just finished it. I'm gobsmacked by it's beauty and elegance. By the intricate way the stories were woven round the history that was unfolding at the turn of the century. Then, as the years crept towards 1914, I knew what was coming and I was anticipating it and dreading it at the same time. She pulled no punches and I've read the last few chapters close to tears. Ok, WW1 stories always get to me, but I was so wrapped up in these characters that I took each incident personally.
I always feel sad when I finish a good book, but I feel emotionally torn this time. I've watched these people grow up and lived their lives with them over the last few days and now it's gone. I'm gutted.