Review: A Single Thread

A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Most readers will know Tracy Chevalier from her best-selling novel The Girl with a Pearl Earring, which was adapted into a film with actors Scarlet Johansson and Colin Firth. A writer who writes detailed and immersive historical fiction, she's always been adept at capturing the zeitgeist of the eras she explores. A Single Thread examines the role of the so-called British "surplus" women in the years following World War I. With so many men killed during the war, the population ratio of men to women in the U.K. was skewed with two million more women of marriageable age than men. The lives of these "surplus" women were often frustrating and constrained by the social norms of the era. Some, like the protagonist of the story, Violet Speedwell, worked and most longed for companionship. Violet, age 38 when we meet her, lost her beloved older brother, and her fiancé, during the war. Not long afterward, her father, the glue that has held their family together during these hard times, dies as well. Her mother is angry, hurt and bitter. Her one surviving brother is married and involved with his own family. Though Violet enjoys time with his wife and children, she pursues a job away from the family's home base of Southampton, in Winchester, in pursuit of peace, privacy, and her own life. Leaving her mother's home she takes serious financial risks and initially lives a meager and lonely existence. That is until she crashes a private service in the cathedral for broderers, who are embroidering cushions for the cathedral as part of a women's volunteering project. (Please note that this needlework is what we now commonly call needlepoint.) Meeting the group and their leader, the real-life figure Mrs. Louisa Pesel, changes the course of Violet's life, and she, in turn, changes the lives of others. Another feature of the book is a focus on the art of bellringing in cathedrals.

This is a novel with lush details about embroidery. If you've ever done any sort of needlework, you're bound to enjoy it. If not, hopefully, you'll appreciate the work described. Likewise with the bellringing, which was fascinating. A quiet book, A Single Thread captures the feeling of despair that was present in the years in between the Great War and WWII, and also examines the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party, as seen from across the Channel in England.

Readers who wish to see some visuals of the embroidery/needlepoint patterns that are described in the book should check out Tracy Chevalier's website, here.

I received a Digital Review Copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

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