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  • Published: 1 March 2008
  • ISBN: 9780099513056
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $29.99

Part Of The Furniture



'A real treat. A warm, witty, lively book' - Val Hennessy, Daily Mail

Seventeen-year-old Juno Marlowe has just waved off to war the two young men she has loved for the best part of her life when the air raid sirens begin to wail out across London. She is rescued from this nightmare by a gaunt stranger called Evelyn, frail and older than his years, who offers her the protection of his house and his family before dying suddenly in the night.

Determined to avoid being sent to Canada to join her mother and new step-father, and still grieving for her lost lovers, Juno instead finds herself on a train to Cornwall in search of Evelyn's family. There she discovers the blossoming of an English spring into which the war only occasionally intrudes and finds at last a peace for herlself and a world in which she is more than simply part of the furniture.

  • Published: 1 March 2008
  • ISBN: 9780099513056
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $29.99

About the author

Mary Wesley

Mary Wesley was born near Windsor in 1912. Her education took her to the London School of Economics and during the War she worked in the War Office. She also worked part-time in the antiques trade. Mary Wesley lived in London, France, Italy, Germany and several places in the West Country. She used to comment that her 'chief claim to fame is arrested development, getting my first novel published at the age of seventy'. That first novel, Jumping the Queue, was followed by a subsequent nine bestsellers: The Camomile Lawn, Second Fiddle, Harnessing Peacocks, The Vacillations of Poppy Carew, Not That Sort of Girl, A Sensible Life, A Dubious Legacy, An Imaginative Experience and Part of the Furniture. Mary Wesley was awarded the CBE in the 1995 New Year's honour list and died in 2002.

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Praise for Part Of The Furniture

A novel whose freshness of tone, energy of plotting and sweet nature make it exceptional by any standards

Sunday Telegraph

Few novelists offer such a rich concoction of amoral spice and cleverness; but to judge her work exclusively on this level is to miss more subtle rewards

Mail on Sunday

With its brilliant final twist, this is Mary Wesley's best yet

Evening Standard