LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
In 1922 Edith Waters and Freddy Bywaters were found guilty of murdering Edith’s husband and were executed. This is the story from Edith’s point of view, told largely through her letters to Freddy. In my mind it is not Jill’s best book and one feels little sympathy for the characters, but strangely, despite knowing the end, one still reads it willing the couple to be allowed to enjoy their love.
Comparison: Susan Fletcher, Deborah Moggach, Lionel Shriver.
Sarah Broadhurst
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About
Fred and Edie Synopsis
In December 1922 Edith Thompson, a smart, bright, lower-middle class woman who worked in a milliner`s shop, was tried for conspiring with her young lover Frederick Bywaters to murder her husband, Percy. The sensational trial, which took place in front of heaving crowds at the Old Bailey, unravelled a real life drama as exciting as any blockbuster: an illicit love affair, a back-street abortion, domestic violence, murder and a double execution. FRED AND EDIE draws together powerful threads between personal memory and public lives, between innocence and responsibility, and between fact and fiction. It is an exploration of a woman caught in the net of her own private fantasy and the conflicts of the era in which she lived, of her muddled attempt to defy convention and reshape her own destiny, and, finally, of the devastation she left in her wake.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780340936283 |
| Publication date: |
28th December 2006 |
| Author: |
Jill Dawson |
| Publisher: |
Hodder & Stoughton General Division |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
276 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Modern and Contemporary Fiction
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| Recommendations: |
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Press Reviews
Jill Dawson Press Reviews
'A triumphantly good novel' - Lynne Truss, Sunday Times
'Gripping...Dawson has got brilliantly under the skin of her main character.' - Val Hennessy, Daily Mail
Author
About Jill Dawson
Jill Dawson is the author of TRICK OF THE LIGHT, MAGPIE, FRED AND EDIE, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award and the Orange Prize, and WILD BOY, all published by Sceptre to critical acclaim. WATCH ME DISAPPEAR, her latest novel, will be published by Sceptre in March 2006. She is also an award-winning poet and has edited several anthologies including The Virago Book of Wicked Verse, and, with Margo Daly, Wild Ways. She was the British Council Fellow at Amherst College, Massachusetts, in 1997 and is currently the Royal Literary Fund Fellow in Writing at the University of East Anglia. Born in Durham, she now lives with her family in the Fens.
Photograph © Luke White
Fellow novelist Katharine McMahon on Jill Dawson...
The Great Lover is a novel about a poet, Rupert Brooke, that
pushes past the cliches of tea on the lawn at Grantchester and takes an
utterly fresh look at the poet. The writing is very clear and precise
and makes for a fascinating read. And what's more, I was inspired to
go and read Brooke's poetry too.
More About Jill Dawson
