From the Booker-winning author of Last Orders and Waterland comes a long-awaited new novel

It is March 30th 1924. It is Mothering Sunday.

How will Jane Fairchild, orphan and housemaid, occupy her time when she has no mother to visit? How, shaped by the events of this never to be forgotten day, will her future unfold?

Beginning with an intimate assignation and opening to embrace decades, Mothering Sunday has at its heart both the story of a life and the life that stories can magically contain. Constantly surprising, joyously sensual and deeply moving, it is Graham Swift at his thrilling best.

I am not as enamored by this one as others but as a short afternoon read it filled the bill for an enjoyable novella. Could be described as a little bit Downton Abbey crossed with an Ian McEwan novel. A simple story that takes place over one 'mothering' Sunday which is a day celebrated in the British Isles where servants are free to visit their mothers. Maid Jane Fairchild has no mother so instead spends the day in bed with her lover, the heir to the next door estate. We learn, through subtle shifts of perspective into the future, that Jane becomes a novelist. How does this happen? What are the experiences that set her true life in motion?

This is an extra wish list book for the Australasian Wishlist Tag Game.

Thank you so much for this wishlist rabck, jeniwren. Gotta love those hitchhikers! And thanks also for the card and all the little goodies. :-)