A Year of Marvellous Ways: The Richard and Judy Bestseller

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The stories are touching and the twist of magical realism lends them a joyful, fairytale element * Daily Record *

It’s Good Friday and the start of a four day weekend so there’s no excuse not to snuggle up with a cup of tea and a good book. The latest Book Club review comes once again from Emma Kingston from Year of the Yes. What is so appealing about A Year of Marvellous Ways in that in its pursuit of magical joy and hope, again expressed in ways so lyrical your heart will dance as you read, it doesn’t pretend that everything will be all right as some kind of foregone conclusion. A Year of Marvellous Ways is then an ode to life – to the good, the bad and the downright, magically-tinged ordinary, every deliciously-executed word a reminder that life becomes what you make of it, that its multitudinous facets can be shaped by perception, by attitude and by a willingness to not consider the game over because you are sent a curveball or three hundred.

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One to read slowly so you can savour every beautiful sentence * Good Housekeeping (Book of the Month) * What was the biggest challenge for you when writing the book? Was it the characters, or finding the journey or…?

The central character is, of course, Marvellous herself whose radical perspective frequently disarmed me. She’s someone who prizes the stripped-down simplicity of the world over heedless progress: “Some things are best left untouched, she said. Tides rise and tides fall. That is perfection enough.” She communes with inanimate objects which sounds fanciful but comes across as a deep, meaningful conversation she’s having with herself more than the world around her. Over the course of the novel, we learn about the three great loves of her life. Her first lover was a woman, but rather than dwelling upon trying to define sexuality its refreshing how she moves from that to relationships with men without ponderous reflection or attributing any meaning to it. She’s also someone dealing with dementia and her struggle with the loss of memory is meaningfully related.A breathtaking reading experience... a beautiful book that is unafraid to reveal the ugliness of the world * Toronto Star * Hi Sarah. Congratulations on being chosen to take part in the Richard and Judy Book Club Spring 2016! How did it feel to find out A Year of Marvellous Ways had been selected? Ridicule, misunderstanding – Marvellous is by no means a conventional woman of thought or deed and has consequently suffered for it – lost love, missed opportunities, a fractured family whose gaps have been filled by fancy and imagination, all could be considered to have blighted her life. Yeah, totally. She has come to that space, and you do see it with some older people that they are very comfortable with who they are. They’re comfortable with their past and with where they are in their present, and they’re not holding onto a future because they know that every day might be their last one, really. So, yeah I like the way she came out. The Winter Book Club gave me the perfect opportunity to give Sarah Winman’s latest offering a queue jump.