Description
From Booklist Her name is Mary. Her hair is the color of milk. And this is her story, told in a compelling voice as British writer Leyshon brings her narrator brilliantly to life. Mary begins her account in 1830, when she is 14 and forced to leave the only world she has known, her abusive father’s farm, where she slaves from sunup to sundown alongside her three sisters. Against her will, Mary’s father sends her to live as housemaid for the ailing vicar’s wife so that he can collect the money. It is in her new life at the vicarage that this illiterate girl realizes her greatest dream, to learn to read and write. But the learning comes at a tragic cost. Resolved to tell the truth of what happened, Mary draws the reader in from the opening pages. Here is a headstrong, forthright, optimistic character determined to survive her wretched circumstances in a literary jewel crafted by an accomplished writer. --Diane Holcomb “Resonant, heartbreaking. . . . The Colour of Milk is a truly wonderful read―a slender, beautiful novel with as much heart as a book twice its size.” — San Francisco Chronicle “The unflinching, observant, and thoroughly persuasive voice of the narrator, a shrewd, illiterate farm girl, makes this slim novel striking.” — The Atlantic “Compelling. . . . Leyshon brings her narrator brilliantly to life. . . . Mary draws the reader in from the opening pages. Here is a headstrong, forthright, optimistic character determined to survive her wretched circumstances in a literary jewel crafted by an accomplished writer.” — Booklist “At once lyric and brutal. . . . Readers of historical and women’s fiction should investigate.”- — Library Journal “Nell Leyshon has beautifully captured a voice that haunts, long after the last word has been read. Brava!” — Kathleen Grissom, New York Times bestselling author of The Kitchen House “A wonderfully convincing voice and a devastating story told with great skill & economy. . . . A small tour de force” — Penelope Lively, award-winning author of Family Album and Moon Tiger “A wonderfully convincing voice and a devastating story told with great skill & economy. . . . A small tour de force” — Marian Keyes, bestselling author of Angels and Anybody Out There? "this is my book and i am writing it by my own hand." Mary and her three sisters rise every day to backbreaking farmwork that threatens to suppress their own awakening desires, whether it's Violet's pull toward womanhood or Beatrice's affinity for the Scriptures. But it's their father, whose anger is unleashed at the slightest provocation, who stands to deliver the most harm. Only Mary, fierce of tongue and a spitfire since birth, dares to stand up to him. When he sends her to work for the local vicar and his invalid wife in their house on the hill, he deals her the only blow she may not survive. Within walking distance of her family farm, the vicarage is a world away–a curious, unsettling place unlike any she has ever known. Teeming with the sexuality of the vicar's young son and the manipulations of another servant, it is also a place of books and learning–a source of endless joy. Yet as young Mary soon discovers, such precious knowledge comes at a devastating price, as is gradually made clear once she begins the task of telling her own story. Reminiscent of Alias Grace in the exploration of the power dynamics between servants and those they serve and of Celie's struggles in The Color Purple , this quietly devastating tour de force reminds us that knowledge can destroy even as it empowers. Nell Leyshon's first novel, Black Dirt , was longlisted for the Orange Prize and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize. She is also an award-winning dramatist whose plays include Comfort Me with Apples , winner of an Evening Standard Award, and Bedlam , which was the first play written by a woman for Shakespeare's Globe. Read more
Features & Highlights
- The Colour of Milk
- is a literary tour de force of power, class, and fate, told in the fierce, urgent voice of the irrepressible Mary, a character as indelible as
- The Color Purple
- ’s Celie and Margaret Atwood’s eponymous Alias Grace.
- Set in England in 1830,
- The Colour of Milk
- by Nell Leyshon is an emotionally haunting work of historical fiction — hailed as “charming, Brontë-esque...and hard to forget” (Marian Keyes) — about an illiterate farm girl’s emotional and intellectual awakening and its devastating consequences.
- Mary, the spirited youngest daughter of an angry, violent man, is sent to work for the local vicar and his invalid wife. Her strange new surroundings offer unsettling challenges, including the vicar’s lecherous son and a manipulative fellow servant. But life in the vicarage also offers unexpected joys, as the curious young girl learns to read and write — knowledge that will come at a tragic price.
