A Complicated Matter

by Anne Youngson

ISBN: 9780857528230

Published: 2023-04-25

A young woman's extraordinary journey of self-discovery and an intimate meditation on what it takes to find our place in the world. 'AN EXTRAORDINARY WRITER' Nina Stibbe 'FULL OF GRACE AND HUMANITY' Sunday Times I used to believed the world had been created for me; every stone and grain of sand, every sunrise and sunset. As I grew older, I began to think of myself as something tacked on to the edge. 1939, London: From McPhail's Passage by the dockyards to Kensington's Grand Palace Hotel, resilient and reserved Rose is forcibly evacuated from her home and dropped in an alien city of falling bombs, perplexing class rules and bad weather. Despite being 'flagrantly foreign' to the locals, she becomes an efficient go-between for the upper-class ladies helping out with the war effort and her own tribe of noisy displaced families. It is only when she is shifted to the countryside to become secretary to the plain-speaking and sightless Major Inchbold that Rose's dizzying journey to...