A Single Thread

This is a novel that’s both quiet and unassuming, but nonetheless very readable.

The main protagonist is Violet, a 38-year-old single woman in 1920s and 30s England. The First World War took everything from her, her brother, her fiancé and her future. She is now one of the tens of thousands of ‘surplus’ women, whose potential husbands fell in WWI, and who therefore had to lead lonely, frustrated lives in a time when women had no real opportunity to make a life for themselves outside a home.

But Violet is both independent and determined. She escapes the confines of her claustrophobic home and suffocating widowed mother, and moves from Southampton to Winchester to start a new life. Working as a typist and living in a boarding house she struggles to make ends meet. But she also begins to build a life of sorts, joining the band of women called the Broderers, who do needlework for Winchester cathedral. Gradually she makes friends, not least the formidable Louisa Pesel (incidentally a real-life character) who helps her and the other women to make the work that still, to this day, shines in the Cathedral. She also makes other friends, men and women both.

The book slowly builds to a very satisfying conclusion, never unrealistic but quietly life affirming. Along the way we, the reader, are allowed to feel incensed by the restrictions placed on unmarried women at that time. I liked this book a lot and Tracy Chevalier has given us a wonderful depiction of a different age. Violet is a good heroine, calm and self-effacing but also quietly determined. The people around her are well painted, both the good ones and the less good ones. The rivalries and small jealousies among the Cathedral’s needleworkers are well drawn and feel entirely real. There are many more strands to this book and it's worth reading it to find them all.
Review by: Freyja