This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing

September 28, 2020
Winspear, the Agatha Award–winning author of the Maisie Dobbs mystery series, uses her talent as a consummate teller of tales to share family stories, some of which she later discovered were greatly exaggerated or untrue, in this lovely memoir. Though she was born in 1955, she provides a visceral portrait of London during WWII and the hardships and cultural changes that shaped England in the decades that followed. She brings to life the sights and fragrances of the Kentish hop fields where her parents did seasonal work, and she unfolds the slow route she took to becoming a writer, starting in her 40s when she wrote her first novel inspired by family war stories. Along the way, she illustrates the kindness of Romany travelers, and devotes a chapter entitled “A Gypsy Life” that recounts how her parents, before they had children, lived in a caravan alongside some Romany families and became friendly with them. At one point, Winspear describes how betrayed she felt when she discovered that her mother lied to her by making her uncle, her mother’s beloved brother, the hero of many of the mother’s wartime stories when in fact some other, more distant relative was the hero. Readers of the Maisie Dobbs series will take particular pleasure in spotting the origins of places, characters, and even plotlines. The author’s fans and lovers of recent English history will be delighted with this elegantly executed memoir. Agent: Amy Rennert, Amy Rennert Literary.

Starred review from August 1, 2020

Not strictly memoir, People Who Love To Eat Are Always the Best People collects Child's standout observations on France, love, travel, life, and, of course, food: "The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook." In One Life, Olympic gold medalist and two-time Women's World Cup champion Rapinoe considers not only her athletic career but her highly publicized stance on social justice issues, showing how her beliefs are rooted in childhood experience. "Maisie Dobbs" all-star mystery writer Winspear changes tack with a memoir showing the impact of World Wars I and II on her family, her parents' life with the Romani, and her childhood in rural Kent, all the while promising This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing.

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 1, 2020
The bestselling author recalls her childhood and her family's wartime experiences. Readers of Winspear's popular Maisie Dobbs mystery series appreciate the London investigator's canny resourcefulness and underlying humanity as she solves her many cases. Yet Dobbs had to overcome plenty of hardships in her ascent from her working-class roots. Part of the appeal of Winspear's Dobbs series are the descriptions of London and the English countryside, featuring vividly drawn particulars that feel like they were written with firsthand knowledge of that era. In her first book of nonfiction, the author sheds light on the inspiration for Dobbs and her stories as she reflects on her upbringing during the 1950s and '60s. She focuses much attention on her parents' lives and their struggles supporting a family, as they chose to live far removed from their London pasts. "My parents left the bombsites and memories of wartime London for an openness they found in the country and on the land," writes Winspear. As she recounts, each of her parents often had to work multiple jobs, which inspired the author's own initiative, a trait she would apply to the Dobbs character. Her parents recalled grueling wartime experiences as well as stories of the severe battlefield injuries that left her grandfather shell-shocked. "My mother's history," she writes, "became my history--probably because I was young when she began telling me....Looking back, her stories--of war, of abuse at the hands of the people to whom she and her sisters had been billeted when evacuated from London, of seeing the dead following a bombing--were probably too graphic for a child. But I liked listening to them." Winspear also draws distinctive portraits of postwar England, altogether different from the U.S., where she has since settled, and her unsettling struggles within the rigid British class system. An engaging childhood memoir and a deeply affectionate tribute to the author's parents.

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