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3.65 AVERAGE
3.65 AVERAGE
relaxing
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A wonderful story. I've read a few by Chevalier and this is surely one of her best. Loved the quiet emotional Englishness of it all. Shocking to realise how far the world has come in less than 100 years and what women in this decade had to face, how hard it was for them to make a life of their own, how much judgement and derision they had to face for their independence. You wouldn't think embroidery could be such a fascinating subject but this book makes it so. And I've never been interested in bell-ringing before reading this. Beautifully expressed.
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
A really atmospheric book, full of interesting characters and pastimes. I felt like I experienced bellringing and making kneelers along with Violet and it was lovely.
Content Warnings
Minor: Sexual assault
Britain lost an estimated two percent of its population during World War I. It sounds insignificant, but that loss represented a generation of men who would have otherwise been wage-earners, husbands and fathers. In the wake of their loss was a generation of women who were left without fathers, brothers, husbands and co-parents. Tracy Chevalier's elegant, delicate and deeply moving A Single Thread traces one of the many who were known as "surplus women" and how their pattern of loss wove into British society in the years between the wars.
"Spinster", that terrible euphemism for the perceived failure of a woman to attract or hold onto a man, originated in the early 14th century when it referred to women who spun and wove yarn. By the 1700s it became a derogatory term, and a legal one, to indicate a woman was of marrying age and yet still shamefully single.
Violet Speedwell (a delightful play of names, as "Speedwell" is a flowering perennial) is the very portrait of a spinster, a surplus woman (I can’t even! Just writing that term boils my blood). It is 1932 and thirty-eight-year-old Violet has finally left her overbearing, peevish mother in Southampton for the cathedral village of Winchester, twelve miles to north. Violet's fiancé was killed at Passchendaele in 1917 and Violet has remained single, though a few times a year she puts on her one good dress — a gold lamé number that saw its best days a decade before when flappers kicked their heels in juke joints- and heads to a hotel bar to sip sherry and wait for a stranger to take her to bed for the night.
Although she revels in her independence in Winchester, she's living hand to mouth, freezing in her bedsit, missing meals to afford a few cigarettes and a weekly trip to the cinema. She is a typist in an insurance office, where her two other younger colleagues put in half-hearted days, just waiting for marriage to take them out of the workplace to become wives and mothers.
Lonely, Violet wanders into her beloved Winchester Cathedral and chances upon a group of broderers, women who embroider kneeling cushions and seat covers for the Cathedral. Although Violet has not embroidered since she was a little girl, she takes a chance and inserts herself into this group of volunteers, determined to learn a new skill and perhaps find friends.
Among her new friends is Gilda, who risks becoming even more of an outcast than Violet by following her own heart. There is Arthur, a 60-year-old bell ringer at the Cathedral whose life is marked by sorrow, loss and loneliness, and Mrs. Pesel, a real-life figure whose confidence in Violet's sewing ability translates into certitude that Violent can weather her current troubles to create a bright future, regardless of her marital status. There are also foes: her mother, who threatens to undermine any sense of self Violet struggles to create; her younger brother and his young family, who need Violet to be a caretaker; and a man from a nearby village who sees a single, independent woman as potential prey.
As Violet's stitches become smoother and more assured, so does her ability to assert her independence and her empathy. The metaphor of stitching herself a new life may seem trite, but Chevalier renders this particular story with such a keen eye for detail, crafting all the missteps and small moments that make a memorable, believable character. What may have been cliché becomes a tapestry of delight and grief, determination and hope.
A Single Thread is far and away the best I have read from Chevalier. Its gentle pace belies its power: a single thread may be a delicate, vulnerable thing, but all those threads woven together create a singular, compelling portrait of courage and longing that is timeless and unforgettable.
"Spinster", that terrible euphemism for the perceived failure of a woman to attract or hold onto a man, originated in the early 14th century when it referred to women who spun and wove yarn. By the 1700s it became a derogatory term, and a legal one, to indicate a woman was of marrying age and yet still shamefully single.
Violet Speedwell (a delightful play of names, as "Speedwell" is a flowering perennial) is the very portrait of a spinster, a surplus woman (I can’t even! Just writing that term boils my blood). It is 1932 and thirty-eight-year-old Violet has finally left her overbearing, peevish mother in Southampton for the cathedral village of Winchester, twelve miles to north. Violet's fiancé was killed at Passchendaele in 1917 and Violet has remained single, though a few times a year she puts on her one good dress — a gold lamé number that saw its best days a decade before when flappers kicked their heels in juke joints- and heads to a hotel bar to sip sherry and wait for a stranger to take her to bed for the night.
Although she revels in her independence in Winchester, she's living hand to mouth, freezing in her bedsit, missing meals to afford a few cigarettes and a weekly trip to the cinema. She is a typist in an insurance office, where her two other younger colleagues put in half-hearted days, just waiting for marriage to take them out of the workplace to become wives and mothers.
Lonely, Violet wanders into her beloved Winchester Cathedral and chances upon a group of broderers, women who embroider kneeling cushions and seat covers for the Cathedral. Although Violet has not embroidered since she was a little girl, she takes a chance and inserts herself into this group of volunteers, determined to learn a new skill and perhaps find friends.
Among her new friends is Gilda, who risks becoming even more of an outcast than Violet by following her own heart. There is Arthur, a 60-year-old bell ringer at the Cathedral whose life is marked by sorrow, loss and loneliness, and Mrs. Pesel, a real-life figure whose confidence in Violet's sewing ability translates into certitude that Violent can weather her current troubles to create a bright future, regardless of her marital status. There are also foes: her mother, who threatens to undermine any sense of self Violet struggles to create; her younger brother and his young family, who need Violet to be a caretaker; and a man from a nearby village who sees a single, independent woman as potential prey.
As Violet's stitches become smoother and more assured, so does her ability to assert her independence and her empathy. The metaphor of stitching herself a new life may seem trite, but Chevalier renders this particular story with such a keen eye for detail, crafting all the missteps and small moments that make a memorable, believable character. What may have been cliché becomes a tapestry of delight and grief, determination and hope.
A Single Thread is far and away the best I have read from Chevalier. Its gentle pace belies its power: a single thread may be a delicate, vulnerable thing, but all those threads woven together create a singular, compelling portrait of courage and longing that is timeless and unforgettable.
https://cdnbookworm.blogspot.com/2019/08/a-single-thread.html
This story is set in 20th century England in the period between wars. It follows Violet who is struggling with grief and trying to find a place for for herself in a battle scared, weary country that has lost its young men.
I enjoyed this book more than a 3 star rating indicates. I was intregued by the history, not enough books are set in that brief period of piece where Britain is licking its wounds after the first world was and watching events in Germany with growing concern. The class system is crumbling leaving well brought up young women rather in the learch!
The main character, Violet, is very well drawn but the plot, or lack thereof, let's the story down. It feels contrived to get as much history in there as possible.
I listened to the audiobook, nicely narrated by Fenella Woolfar.
I enjoyed this book more than a 3 star rating indicates. I was intregued by the history, not enough books are set in that brief period of piece where Britain is licking its wounds after the first world was and watching events in Germany with growing concern. The class system is crumbling leaving well brought up young women rather in the learch!
The main character, Violet, is very well drawn but the plot, or lack thereof, let's the story down. It feels contrived to get as much history in there as possible.
I listened to the audiobook, nicely narrated by Fenella Woolfar.
Kept me company on a long hot day by the Hume Highway waiting for a tow. Not an earth shattering book and the plot held no surprises but the author’s understanding of the therapeutic nature of hand stitching (and bell ringing) is spot on, as is her understanding that it can be subversive.
This was a lovely read. Violet is a single woman, aged 38, an aberration to what is expected of a woman's role in 1932. She leaves her crotchety mother (nursing her own grief at losing a son in the war), for a new life in Winchester, working as a typist. I find the 1930s a fascinating era, as women and communities were still working through the social changes that lingered from the effects of WW1, of how to fill the missing generations of young men, and the transformation of women's roles, their (partial) right to vote. Violet searches for connection, and finds it with other women in a broderers group, doing needlepoint for cathedral cushions and kneelers. There are many motifs of pattern, repetition, paralleled in the examination of bellringing through an older male character, and subtle changes to the pattern that at first appear to make a chaotic sound or misinterpreted symbol become powerful indicators of change. A single thread can be a voice against oppression, against oppressive traditions. There are men's spaces, and women's spaces. Where does a single woman fit in? Can she navigate an open field, or sit in a pub alone, without suspicion and risk? So much as changed since the 1930s, and yet the issues of women who transgress their 'spaces' and the roles they are expected to conform to within these spaces, persists. As I well know, as a single mother. And as every woman who wants to walk alone at night knows.
4.5 stars
This book took me to another place and time during a period when I needed an escape, but couldn't go anywhere. It's gorgeously written, historical fiction set in post WW I Britain. If you're an Anglophile and enjoy needlepoint, I think you'd love this book. It's a beautifully done set piece, so if you crave action this book is not for you. The narrative arc is soothing, well developed and especially suited to the time and setting. The narrator of the audio-book Fenella Woolgar is superb.
This book took me to another place and time during a period when I needed an escape, but couldn't go anywhere. It's gorgeously written, historical fiction set in post WW I Britain. If you're an Anglophile and enjoy needlepoint, I think you'd love this book. It's a beautifully done set piece, so if you crave action this book is not for you. The narrative arc is soothing, well developed and especially suited to the time and setting. The narrator of the audio-book Fenella Woolgar is superb.
Just finished this on Audible and I was so disappointed with the end.
The book is set in the early 1930s and follows Violet, one of the many 'surplus' women after WW1. In a desperate step to gain independence Violet moves away to Winchester, where she meets and joins the 'broderers' of Winchester Cathedral. I enjoyed how this book portrayed the loneliness, poverty and vulnerability of single women in this period, who are judged and restricted by their peers. It beautifully depicted how 13 years on, the loss of WW1 still haunts the population and yet the rise of Nazism in Germany loomed on the horizon (also enjoyed how Chevalier reminded us of the Daily Mail's opinions during this time, something many often forget). I also enjoyed how the author talked about embroidery and how she created the cathedral as a sanctuary, both metaphorically and literally. Yet, I couldn't warm to Violet as a character, and couldn't empathise with some of her decisions (apart from how she stood up for herself professionally). Overall I liked the book and the narration by Fenella Woolgar but I didn't love the plot.
SPOILERS
However, Violet's relationship with Arthur annoyed me - somehow justifying their weird affair because his wife was so broken and haunted by the loss of her son in WW1?! It made little sense to me - as did the Jack Wells storyline which felt unnecessary and poorly handled - maybe it was to emphasize the vulnerability of Violet as a single women, either way it hit too close to home for me and added very little to the plot. I was disappointed with the ending too - it felt rushed and unrealistic.
The book is set in the early 1930s and follows Violet, one of the many 'surplus' women after WW1. In a desperate step to gain independence Violet moves away to Winchester, where she meets and joins the 'broderers' of Winchester Cathedral. I enjoyed how this book portrayed the loneliness, poverty and vulnerability of single women in this period, who are judged and restricted by their peers. It beautifully depicted how 13 years on, the loss of WW1 still haunts the population and yet the rise of Nazism in Germany loomed on the horizon (also enjoyed how Chevalier reminded us of the Daily Mail's opinions during this time, something many often forget). I also enjoyed how the author talked about embroidery and how she created the cathedral as a sanctuary, both metaphorically and literally. Yet, I couldn't warm to Violet as a character, and couldn't empathise with some of her decisions (apart from how she stood up for herself professionally). Overall I liked the book and the narration by Fenella Woolgar but I didn't love the plot.
SPOILERS
However, Violet's relationship with Arthur annoyed me - somehow justifying their weird affair because his wife was so broken and haunted by the loss of her son in WW1?! It made little sense to me - as did the Jack Wells storyline which felt unnecessary and poorly handled - maybe it was to emphasize the vulnerability of Violet as a single women, either way it hit too close to home for me and added very little to the plot. I was disappointed with the ending too - it felt rushed and unrealistic.