A SINGLE THREAD
Since the stellar success of The Girl
with the Pearl Earring, a new Tracy Chevalier novel is awaited with keen anticipation. Her most recent, A
Single Thread, described admiringly by Nick Rennison in the Times as ‘a novel that movingly examines hidden depths beneath quiet exteriors’, was rapturously received by reviewers. Quite an achievement for a quiet, restrained tale, set between the two world wars, of mature love and church kneelers.
In the Observer, Hepzibah Anderson called it ‘bittersweet’ and noted that ‘just twice does its heroine, Violet Speedwell, think to herself: “I want to do that.” Her wishes are self-sacrificing enough: to embroider a kneeler in Winchester Cathedral and to ring its bells. Given that the year is 1932, the first is more easily realised than the second, yet both, in their way, are radical.’
Violet has lost both her fiancé and her brother in the trenches of the First World War, and now, aged 38, has plucked up the courage to leave her overbearing mother and make a life in Winchester for herself. As the online book blogger Bookliterati put it: ‘This opens up a new life, new friends, new experiences, and secrets she must keep from friends and family.’ Bookliterati thought it ‘beautifully written, with empathy and understanding: this is simply a stunning read’.
In the Daily Mail, Elizabeth Buchan hailed its ‘quiet but devastating empathy’, and in Red, Anna Bonet ‘tore through A Single
Thread, rooting for Violet to find her happy ever after in this utterly immersive novel’ .