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Tortoise by Candlelight

Fourteen-year-old Emmie Bean loves her family. But she worries about them too. Her mother is gone (no one will say where). Her father drinks instead of writing. Her younger brother Oliver has started stealing. And older sister Alice disappears on illicit dates.

Then there is their isolated house’s menagerie of birds and animals, including Mo the squirrel and Murgatroyd the tortoise, all of which require Emmie’s love and attention.

When the Sargents, a childless couple, move in next door, Emmie and the Beans find themselves drawn to this welcoming but aimless husband and wife.

Emmie fears the darkness and chaos surrounding them all. But perhaps love burns bright . . .

It is a small book, acute, discreet and tender; it is also written with warm care and considerable taste – all qualities too easily overlooked

Kirkus Reviews

About Nina Bawden

Nina Bawden was born in Ilford in 1925. During World War II she was evacuated to Wales, an experience which informed her 1973 children’s classic Carrie’s War. She studied PPE at Oxford’s Somerville College and began writing during her first marriage, while her babies slept. She wrote freely for both children and adults, publishing nearly fifty books, ‘making use of all my life, all memory, wasting nothing.’ In fact, her life was full of drama and incident: she divorced her first husband after meeting her second on a bus, her son Nikki drowned after years of incarceration due to his struggles with schizophrenia, Nina lost her second husband in the Potters Bar railcrash in 2002. When she died in 2012, most of her books were still in print.
Details
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • ISBN: 9781405987172
  • Length: 320 pages
  • Price: £5.99
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