LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
Shortlisted for the YA Book Prize 2024
Set in 1896, Yours From the Tower is a clever, compelling epistolary novel that dances with the magic of female friendship, romance, and thought-provoking presentations of its historic context. Told, in the main, through letters between three young women, this splendid story invites “then and now” comparisons as it reveals how restrictive life was for women in the late nineteenth-century, along with the era’s huge social divides.
After leaving boarding school, best friends Tirzah, Sophia and Polly are on the brink of leading disparate adult lives. This comes as a result of their very different backgrounds, and from them having very different personalities and dreams.
Sophia, whose ambitions of being a journalist have been quashed by dint of her being female, has been ushered into the London Season to find a rich husband — preferably a titled gentleman. Meanwhile, Polly is loving life teaching in an orphanage, finding fulfilment in making a difference to poor children who’ve been dealt terribly difficult starts in life. Then there’s flighty Tirzah. Tortuously frustrated by being forced to act as her strict grandmother’s unpaid companion, she makes a succession of rash decisions and harbours family secrets.
With Sophia, in particular, voicing thought-provoking statements on injustices of the age (“It is unfair, isn’t it? If we were men, there wouldn’t be any of this bother about marrying well. We could go off to university and become lawyers or clergymen or go into business… But what are my options if I do not find a husband?”), Yours From the Tower also tingles with romance while being underpinned by the nourishing power of female friendship.
It’s also peppered with wit, such as this whip-smart quip from Sophia when addressing one of her suitors, bohemian aristocrat Sebastian: “I think you and Helena are absurd to call a policemen capitalist scum, when he earns an honest living and you and she are the grandchildren of an earl.”
Joanne Owen
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Yours From the Tower Synopsis
1896. Tirzah, Sophia and Polly are best friends who’ve left boarding school and gone back to very different lives. Polly is teaching in an orphanage. Sophia is looking for a rich husband at the London Season. And Tirzah is stuck acting as an unpaid companion to her grandmother. In a series of letters, they share their hopes, their frustrations, their dramas ... and their romances. Can these three very different young women find happiness? '
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781839134814 |
| Publication date: |
4th July 2024 |
| Author: |
Sally Nicholls |
| Publisher: |
Andersen Press Ltd |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
359 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Young Adult Fiction
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| Other Genres: |
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Press Reviews
Sally Nicholls Press Reviews
"An addictive, romantic epistolary novel" - Guardian
"I loved this book. An unputdownable friendship story told in letters so vivid and immersive that I felt like joining in with the correspondence" -- Hilary McKay
"Building on her previous historical fiction exploring the restrictions on women in society, the award-winning, always-excellent Sally Nicholls moves to the late Victorian era... This immersive, uplifting book is an absolute delight" - Irish Times
"With great affection and sympathy, these winning heroines forge their own paths in this highly readable, tautly paced work" -- starred review - Publishers Weekly
"The novel is heart-warming, intelligent and exciting, and thoroughly recommended for girls (and boys) hovering on the cusp of adolescence. I loved it" -- Philip Womack - Literary Review
Author
About Sally Nicholls
Sally Nicholls was born in Stockton-on-Tees, just after midnight, in a thunderstorm. Her father died when she was two and she and her brother Ian were brought up by her mother. She always wanted to write - when people asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, 'I used to say "I'm going to be a writer" - very definite'.
After school she worked in a Red Cross Hospital in Japan, travelled around Australia and New Zealand and returned to do a degree in Philosophy and Literature at Warwick.
Her first book Ways to Live Forever was a multiple prize winner:
Winner of the Glen Dimplex Prize for New Writers 2008.
Winner of Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize 2008.
Winner of Luchs Prize (Germany) for best children’s book published in Germany in the last year.
Longlisted for Branford Boase Award 2009.
She now lives in a little flat in London and has a part-time job as an administrator for a charity called Effective Intervention. The rest of her time is spent writing stories and trying to believe her luck.
Photo by Eric Luke
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