📚Book Review📚
The Offing, by Benjamin Myers, is a quiet novel that sneaks up on you with its beauty, and message of kindness and friendship. The novel is set after World War II and features Robert Appleyard, a young man who sets out on a journey to avoid going down into the mines of his hometown. On his voyage, he meets Dulcie, an older woman living in a small home near the sea, who welcomes Robert into her life. They begin a friendship that provides comfort, companionship, and in a time when the world was recovering from the war, a family to rebuild broken spirits.
I really enjoyed this book. It is a short novel, but one that flows with a lyrical sense of place and time. Dulcie is one of those great characters who fills up the page with personality and presence. You fall in love with her immediately. The author’s writing, particularly the descriptions of the countryside and sea, is exquisite.
“I rose out of the cleft in which the cottage and the meadow sat, and the land once again opened out. Behind me was a billowing blanket of life rippling down to the clustered fisherman‘s houses of the bay, and then beyond that nothing but miles of sea, which from this elevation appeared perfectly calm beneath the shallow breath of a sighing afternoon’s sky. “
The narrative is full of these types of sentences, a painting of words that are vivid like brushstrokes. It is one of those novels that you read with a cup of tea and feel thankful for the beauty our world provides, and the beauty of relationships that emerge from the unlikeliest of places.
❓The main characters in this novel drink a lot of tea. Do you ever have afternoon or morning tea?
I feel I was born in the wrong place as I love afternoon tea.
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