It all begins, and ends, with a book. Arthur is a jobbing painter and decorator. One of his assignments is to redecorate the library of a clergyman. During his lunch break, Arthur picks up one of the books and finds himself curiously aroused by the strangely sensuous paintings in it.
Songs of Innocence and Experience
It’s an illustrated edition of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience but Arthur doesn’t know this as he cannot read. Back home in Plymouth he shows the book to his girl, Queenie May, who doesn’t understand the book but knows that it makes her uncomfortable.
Sibling rivalry
When Arthur is called up to fight in the First World War, he and Queenie May hurriedly marry. Like so many, Arthur returns a changed man, made irascible and taciturn by the horrors he has endured in the trenches. Offering comfort, a comrade has taught him to read from a family Bible and through this friend, Arthur has discovered Catholicism, much to Queenie May’s disgust.
Florrie, Arthur’s daughter, desperate for his attention follows him to into the Catholic Church, but it is Alice to whom he is drawn, and Alice to whom he reads Blake’s book. Florrie watches jealously but she understands that Arthur’s attention is not just that of a loving father but has much more to do with desire. When Florrie falls in love with the handsome dashing Eddie, Alice awkwardly hopes that he will notice her instead.
She gives the couple the book, inherited from Arthur, as a wedding present complete with a letter which Lottie rebuffs. This sibling rivalry is the basis of Jacqueline Yallop’s accomplished first novel which explores the relationship between Florrie and Alice, and the ways in which things unsaid can often be more destructive than things said, no matter how painful they might be.
A gentle and perceptive first novel
Yallop has a deft hand with period detail although her use of slang hits an occasional jarring anachronistic note. The misunderstandings that result from young Mary’s mischievous rewriting of her sister Alice’s letter are handled well and with a quiet underlying humour. However, the contrivance of Blake's book as the recurring motif becomes a little strained towards the end as, now restored by her granddaughter, it becomes the subject of a bidding war, coming under the hammer at half a million pounds. That said Yallop ends this perceptive and absorbing novel with a light but satisfying touch.
Kissing Alice by Jacqueline Yallop (2010) is published by Atlantic Books
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