Freya
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By Anthony Quinn
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2 reviews
‘Extraordinarily evocative… A fantastic book.’ – Simon Mayo Radio 2 Book Club
London, May 1945. Freya Wyley, twenty, meets Nancy Holdaway, eighteen, amid the wild celebrations of VE Day, the prelude to a devoted and competitive friendship that will endure on and off for the next two decades. Freya, wilful, ambitious, outspoken, pursues a career in newspapers which the chauvinism of Fleet Street and her own impatience conspire to thwart, while Nancy, gentler, less self-confident, struggles to get her first novel published. Both friends become entangled at university with Robert Cosway, a charismatic young man whose own ambition will have a momentous bearing on their lives.
Flitting from war-haunted Oxford to the bright new shallows of the 1960s, Freya plots the unpredictable course of a woman’s life and loves against a backdrop of Soho pornographers, theatrical peacocks, willowy models, priapic painters, homophobic blackmailers, political careerists.
Beneath the relentless thrum of changing times and a city being reshaped, we glimpse the eternal: the battles fought by women in pursuit of independence, the intimate mysteries of the human heart, and the search for love. Stretching from the Nuremberg war trials to the advent of the TV celebrity, from innocence abroad to bitter experience at home, Freya presents the portrait of an extraordinary woman taking arms against a sea of political and personal tumult.
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Quinn is one of those rare male authors who manage to construct a convincing female character: in fact all of his characters are well drawn, interesting if not always likeable, memorable and plausible. Quinn captures the mood and characteristics of the passing decades: the forties, fifties and sixties are the backdrop to the story in terms of changes in culture and the law, especially in relation to homosexuality and the challenges facing women journalists. Quinn knows the settings of his story exceedingly well: London and Oxford are brought to life in minute detail, the visits to Nurembourg and Florence are vividly realistic Freya has humour and pathos, holds the reader's attention through the changing world from VE day to the swinging sixties, always keeps the central character of Freya to the fore whilst ensuring the reader is intersted in what is happening to the cast of supporting players, all of whom have a role in Freya's journey. This book is well paced, varies locations and cameos, the attention to detail keeps the reader in the mindset of the times, the story combines cynicism with a determined confidence in the future.
Such a great book, so evocative of the time and place, and a great exploration of the lives of two women.
