‘The Whalebone Theatre is one of those books that has you hooting with laughter one minute and feeling absolutely floored the next . . . Joanna Quinn is one of those writers who has her finger on humanity’s pulse. An absolute treat of a book, to be read and reread.’ Sunday Times
Within the Whalebone Theatre, Cristabel Seagrave can escape her feckless step-parents and brisk governesses, and her imagination comes to life . . .
Cristabel has always wanted her life to be a story, but there are no girls in the books in her dusty family library. For an unwanted orphan who grows into an unmarriageable young woman, there is no place at all for her in a traditional English manor. But from the day that a whale washes up on the beach at the Chilcombe estate in Dorset, and twelve-year-old Cristabel plants her flag and claims it as her own, she is determined to do things differently.
With her step-parents blithely distracted by their endless party guests, Cristabel and her siblings, Flossie and Digby, scratch together an education from the plays they read in their freezing attic, drunken conversations eavesdropped through oak-panelled doors, and the esoteric lessons of Maudie their maid.
But as the children grow to adulthood and the Second World War approaches, jolting their lives on to very different tracks, it becomes clear that the roles they are expected to play are no longer those they want. As they find themselves drawn into the conflict, they must each find a way to write their own story.
‘A book that will be loved unreasonably and life-long’ Francis Spufford
