Brief Shining - Softcover

'CAPTURES THOSE PERFECT ENDLESS SUMMERS OF CHILDHOOD . . . THE RUSTIC TUMBLING STYLE OF LAURIE LEE'S NOSTALGIC PROSE IS MIXED WITH PUNGENT STABS REMINISCENT OF KATHERINE MANSFIELD. A HAUNTING BOOK.' (She magazine)

This book is the sequel to THE QUIET WAR OF REBECCA SHELDON. You don't need to have read that book before you read this one but it will surely be all the more rewarding if you have. In BRIEF SHINING we return to Willow Dassett farm and the Ludbury clan some twenty years after we left them in the earlier book.

To Meg Ludbury's young daughters, Sally and Anne, Willow Dassett was a place of enchantment where (on holiday from their drab northern town) they could play at farming and enjoy being their grandfather's 'nice little girls'. But as they all get older (adults as well as children), ageing and death and sexual resentment create secrets and perils and family tensions that have to be overcome. Summers are no longer perfect. Sally, the elder daughter, realizes that the apparent decline in Willow Dassett's charm is largely due to the jealousy and resentment directed towards her by her own mother and enlists the memory of her grandmother, Rebecca, as she struggles for her own kind of empowerment.

'A MOVING WELL-OBSERVED AND SENSITIVELY WRITTEN TALE OF THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF FAMILY LIFE.' (The Lady)

'THE NARRATIVE IS QUIETLY HAUNTING WITH MEMORABLE CHARACTERS' (Publishers Weekly)