Part of the Furniture: Amazon.ca: Mary Wesley: Books

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From Amazon.com

The heroine of Mary Wesley's latest novel, Part of the Furniture, is 17- year-old Juno Marlowe, a girl possessed of both extraordinary innocence and remarkable courage. We first meet Juno during the World War II blitz of London; she is suffering the twin effects of rape and having to sleep next to a dead stranger during an air raid. Other novelists might have chosen to plumb these traumatic events for several chapters at least, but Wesley gives them no more time than she thinks they deserve and then moves quickly on to the heart of her story, which takes Juno far away to the western corner of England to deliver a letter from the dead man to his family. Here Juno meets the stranger's father, a man considerably older than herself, and finds her soulmate.

If there's such a thing as a steely-eyed romantic, Mary Wesley is one. On the one hand, she deals with death, rape, and other horrors with unsentimental straightforwardness and humor as black as a coal cellar; on the other, she is a firm believer in love's ability to heal even the deepest wounds. The pleasure of reading Part of the Furniture is observing this surprising marriage of love and pragmatism, as well as the unexpected twists and turns Wesley throws into her tale of loving during wartime. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Idiosyncratic characters, sublimely understated prose, and coincidence-driven plots make the splendid Wesley (An Imaginative Experience, LJ 2/15/95) an acquired taste. Darker than Barbara Pym, more romantic than Anita Brookner, she's carved out a singular literary territory. The setting of her latest work is World War II England, and her heroine is vulnerable, intelligent Juno Marlowe, who has been terribly ill used by the two men she's adored all her life. Wandering London's streets after seeing them off to war, she is caught in an air raid and is plucked from danger by sickly Evelyn Copplestone, whose lungs were shredded by mustard gas in the Great War. Touched by Juno's beauty and desolation, he gives her a letter of introduction to his father, Robert, and then dies. Juno treks to Robert's farm in Cornwall and is taken in. A tender, entirely believable May-December romance ensues. This beautiful, ironic, and utterly winning story is one of Wesley's best. Highly recommended.?Jo Manning, Staten Island, N.Y.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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