The Finest Type of English Womanhood

A sensational debut based on a real-life murder case

A dark, compelling debut ... Heath skilfully recreates the trajectory of Gibson's life, but it's Trelling's equally damaged character ... which provides the vital emotional charge

Heath combines imaginative, fast paced story telling with an unerring sense of period, place and mood... an exceptionally well-written, suspenseful novel.

Excellent on the atmosphere of post-war Britain and the lure of South Africa... compellingly told, reminiscent of early Doris Lessing ... the twists keep the reader glued to the novel.

Excellent ... There is a compulsion and persuasive assurance in the writing

A strong, dark and original story, told by an engrossing new voice in English fiction

An exceptionally well-written, suspenseful novel ... with an unerring sense of period, place and mood

The strength of this book is its evocation of powerful sexuality and its capturing the flavour of South Africa 50 years ago.

Heath's reckless, innocent Laura, caught in the upheaval and cruelty of an unjust system that mingled bloodshed with the tennis club and the bitchy tea party, is unforgettable

Rachel Heath explores the dangers of intimacy, the secrets behind ordinary existences, the fruitlessness of the search for a home, and, ultimately, the grim inevitability of disaster. A promising debut from a startling new voice.

The closest thing I can compare it to is The Secret History by Donna Tart.

Rachel Heath is excellent on the atmosphere of post-war Britain and the lure of South Africa.

This author is good at sex, writing well about female sensuality.

The interweaving of the lives of Gay and Laura is skilfully handled, the plot ever-thickening as the two move towards that fatal voyage back to Britain.

Rachel Heath's dark compelling debut novel tells the tale of two very different girls; both are misfits trying to find a story in which they can star.

... examines the extraordinary lengths people will go to when driven by love.

Those who survive do dreadful things. This is the nub of their experiences and also, hints the author of our own.

A highly accomplished debut, this is a chilling portrait of racial tension, social immorality, betrayal and love, and also an atmospheric examination of the end of innocence.

The writing is strong and though the sections featuring Gay's earlier life lose momentum, the story picks up pace when the girls' paths become entwined and the conclusion is compelling and thrillingly macabre.

This fictional account of a true story gives a darkly shocking version of the events surrounding this tragic case.

Brilliantly melds a factual post-war murder into a dark fictional tale

Rachel Heath was born in Bristol in 1968. She lives with her husband, a screen writer, and their three children and one dog in Bath. This is her first novel.

It is 1946, and seventeen-year-old Laura Telling is stagnating in her dilapidated Sussex family home, while her eccentric parents slip further into isolation. A chance encounter with Paul Lovell offers her the chance to alter the course of her destiny - and to embark on a new life in South Africa. 
 
Many miles north, sixteen-year-old Gay Gibson is desperate to escape Birkenhead. When the girls' paths cross in Johannesburg, Laura is exposed to Gay's wild life of parties and inappropriate liaisons. Each in their own worlds, but thrown together, the girls find their lives inextricably entangled, with fatal consequences...

Rachel Heath

Born and brought up in the Essex market town where she still lives, Stella is content with the everyday satisfactions that marriage and motherhood bring. Only when her own mother goes missing does Stella’s sense of herself, and the world she inhabits, shift . . . like her central character’s life, Rachel Heath’s novel has its own quiet pleasures.

Heath’s skill is to wind people together, some of them related to one another, others strangers with nothing in common except the place in which they live . . . This is a novel about personality, and behaviour – oh, and Saffron Walden. Much is convincing (Saffron Walden entirely so: I feel I know it). The Finest Type of English Womanhood was shortlisted for the Costa first novel award. The second is notoriously hard to pull off, particularly when the first has attracted attention. Part of the Spell goes a good way towards meeting that challenge.

This quiet, engaging novel ... casts its own enchantment on the reader, teasing you in through meanderings and byways to the crux of the matter – honest self-knowledge, engagement with the reality of our ordinary lives, facing up to ourselves with all our history, our limitations and faults, forgiveness of ourselves for not being bigger, better people ... Part of the Spell is a perceptive and warmhearted celebration of home, and of knowing and accepting who you are.

In a small English town, everyone is silently struggling to be the person they think they should be. Tacita is pretending to ignore her husband's affair; Theresa is determined to stay so busy she won’t have time to feel guilty; and Stella just wants everything to stay the same. But when Sheila, a widow, mother and grandmother, disappears from the town, their private lives start to collide and change ...

Rachel Heath

Praise for Part of the Spell

Born and brought up in the Essex market town where she still lives, Stella is content with the everyday satisfactions that marriage and motherhood bring. Only when her own mother goes missing does Stella’s sense of ...

Heath’s skill is to wind people together, some of them related to one another, others strangers with nothing in common except the place in which they live . . . This is a novel about personality, and behaviour – oh, ...

This quiet, engaging novel ... casts its own enchantment on the reader, teasing you in through meanderings and byways to the crux of the matter – honest self-knowledge, engagement with the reality of our ordi ...

Born and brought up in the Essex market town where she still lives, Stella is content with the everyday satisfactions that marriage and motherhood bring. Only when her own mother goes missing does Stella’s sense of ...

Heath’s skill is to wind people together, some of them related to one another, others strangers with nothing in common except the place in which they live . . . This is a novel about personality, and behaviour – oh, ...

This quiet, engaging novel ... casts its own enchantment on the reader, teasing you in through meanderings and byways to the crux of the matter – honest self-knowledge, engagement with the reality of our ordi ...

Born and brought up in the Essex market town where she still lives, Stella is content with the everyday satisfactions that marriage and motherhood bring. Only when her own mother goes missing does Stella’s sense of ...

Heath’s skill is to wind people together, some of them related to one another, others strangers with nothing in common except the place in which they live . . . This is a novel about personality, and behaviour – oh, ...

This quiet, engaging novel ... casts its own enchantment on the reader, teasing you in through meanderings and byways to the crux of the matter – honest self-knowledge, engagement with the reality of our ordi ...

Books by Rachel Heath

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter