Bloody Mary - Softcover

Henderson, Meg

3.49

51 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006550274 ISBN 13: 9780006550273

Publisher: Flamingo, 2000

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A cracking novel of Glasgow from one of Scotland’s best-loved and best-selling writers.

Helen Davidson is as bustling, bright and businesslike as the mighty City of Glasgow itself. The city’s dominant commercial firm is Helen’s birthright and occupation, and only her doctor daughter Marylka can compete with it for her attentions. They are strong women both, moulded in the shadow of the strongest of them all – dogged, selfless, down-to-earth Aunt Mary, Bloody Mary.

Eilean Og is about as different from Glasgow as could be, an island out into the wind off the west coast of Scotland. For incoming infants it’s a curious new home, and those ‘boarded out’ from Glasgow – such as Alec and Betty Craig – huddle together in the face of such a hostile environment. On this barren isle, marriages are strong and offspring stronger. Over in Glasgow, the Davidson dynasty seems cursed to see its marriages fail and its sons become tyrants or cowards. It is young Marylka who finds herself at the end of this line at the end of a century. But hope and salvation lie in the most surprising place, out west, into the wind.

In this page-turning, heart-rending novel, Meg Henderson shows her readers that the author of Finding Peggy and The Holy City is now without doubt one of the most captivating storytellers in all Britain.

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Review:

‘Meg Henderson’s fiction deals with all the big issues in women’s lives, from hair to heredity... If you like the rich detail of domestic lives, told with humour and sharpness, Bloody Mary will do nicely.’
Scotland on Sunday

‘A potent blend of the spirited and the sanguine... In her stride, Henderson can mix it with the best of them, her generosity of spirit shining through.’
Sunday Herald

From the Publisher:

Reviews
"Henderson's strengths are her ear for idiom, her eye for itemising and her love of the local, her generosity of spirit shining through. Those who lost themselves in 'Finding Peggy' will relish the strength of character evident in 'Bloody Mary'." GLASGOW SUNDAY HERALD

"Meg Henderson's journalistic background undoubtedly adds to the ease with which she describes people and places, at once familiar and freshly seen. This is a novel full of the rich detail of domestic lives, told with humour and sharpness." SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY

"'Bloody Mary' reveals the desperate reality of Glasgow's "boarded-outs", unwanted children who were sent to live with surrogate parents as virtual slaves. Henderson has a real feel for the history she revels in and the knack of bringing it to realistic light as she gets behind the bare facts of life in Glasgow and the Western Isles over the last century." THE LIST

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