The Wildflowers

St Just Thursday Evening Reading Group 7th May 2026.

The Wildflowers. Harriet Evans.

This book is a long family saga, told from different protagonists’ points of view, and with numerous time-shifts between periods ranging from the 1940s to the 2010s. There are quite a lot of characters, introduced at various stages, and we felt the book was better read in hard copy rather than on an electronic reader, as we often wanted to ‘flick back’ to verify something.

Quite a few readers commented that the story was good, and quite complex, but overly long, and some felt bogged down in the middle (though they enjoyed the beginning and the end). The time-shifts were felt hard to cope with, and it was easy to confuse the different generations.

A sad book, we thought; very few of the characters had happy childhoods. The principal character Tony was an especially damaged person, the reasons for this originating in World War Two, when his parents were killed. Madeleine also was highly disadvantaged, though we never found out precisely why her father treated her so badly; the same with Julia, Madeleine’s aunt.

The house in Dorset, called the Bosky, was a very characterful place and a big part of the story, not only as the setting but also as a refuge for the family, and the inheritance of both Tony and Cord.

Several people also wondered about the dialogue used, and whether this was very convincing for the periods in which it was set.

On the whole we thought (with one or two reservations) that this was a good book, with well-drawn characters and an interesting story - probably a long holiday read.