Meet the Author
Eleanor Wood Staunch, Harper Collins, £12.99
When life became too much for writer Eleanor Wood, she knew that to get through it she needed to be “staunch”.
Left reeling from bereavement, a parental break-up and her own failed relationships, she decided to take off on a “girls’ holiday” to India with the three most resolute women she knows: her grandmother Dot, then 86, and her great aunties Rose, 89, and Ann, 72.
The wisdom, energy and humour they exuded helped the then 36-year-old recalibrate, turning around a “rock-bottom” that had lasted a few years.
It happened in only weeks and, two years on, life is better than ever for the writer whose memoir tells the tale.
But the girls’ trip to Goa had an even more poignant purpose. India had been the home of the over-seventy contingent before the violent partition of 1947, which left more than one million people dead and many more displaced.
And Dot – a child at boarding school on the “wrong-side” of the border with the now Pakistan – narrowly escaped with her life, thanks to her oldest sister, school nurse Clara. She arranged for them to be smuggled to safety.
Finally reunited, the family boarded the ship The Empire Halladale to arrive in Glasgow in the freezing January of that year. Having emigrated to build India’s railways in the 19th Century it was the first time any of the generations had set foot on UK soil.
Eleanor tells P.S:“My auntie Clara was the absolute staunchest of all the women in my family.”
Her own Urdu-speaking “Nan” coming a close second. Eleanor explains:“No matter how bad things got the family had each other and were grateful to be together.”
Her memoir – in part a love letter to the older generation and one laced with many laughout-loud moments – opens with Dot, now 88, debating the quality of the local Go-Go Goa cocktail:“Rosie, do you think there’s enough gin in this?” she grumbles.
Eleanor, whose family now live in Berkshire, reveals:“The book is a snapshot of the specific moment I was in.
“My Nan and my aunties are the older, wiser voices in the memoir.They were especially important at a point when I was feeling out of step with people my age.
“It is easy to look at older people and assume their lives have been very conventional and they can’t understand the problems some people my age have. But, when you dig into it, they have all been through so much.
“The heartache and fear my family experienced fleeing India is unimaginable and inspiring.”
On that holiday, through the vibrant, senior women in her life, the writer learned what it means to be strong in the face of true adversity.
She confesses:“Before my holiday with them, I felt like I was ancient; that I had ruined everything in my life and it was too late to turn that around.
“I needed my Nan and my aunts to put that in perspective.
“They did. I came back with new-found wisdom.Today I feel much younger than I did then.
“We can all learn from the older generation. I feel incredibly lucky to have my older relatives; they are such a positive influence.
“I hope people read this book and think,‘I have to go and ring my Nan’.”