A Year of Marvellous Ways: The Richard and Judy Bestseller

Product Information

One to read slowly so you can savour every beautiful sentence * Good Housekeeping (Book of the Month) * A Year of Marvellous Ways is then an ode to life – to the good, the bad and the downright, magically-tinged ordinary, every deliciously-executed word a reminder that life becomes what you make of it, that its multitudinous facets can be shaped by perception, by attitude and by a willingness to not consider the game over because you are sent a curveball or three hundred. At a recent event Sarah Winman proclaimed, “I’m not interested in the probable, only the possible.” That is particularly apparent in Marvellous’ story. She is a remarkable character and woven throughout her narrative are elements of fantasy and wonder. It truly indulges your imagination. But it requires you to come to the book as a non-skeptical reader, to suspend belief or judgment and just be open to simply embrace beautiful storytelling. A glorious poem of a novel - a story to read slowly and to marvel at the beauty of it -- Rosamund Lupton, author of SISTER

And that marvellously doesn’t sound pretentious or overly-pronounced but authentic and real with a dash of the sort of otherworldiness and magic that many of us wish routinely came with everyday life. A book to savour, to read in wonderful, rich little bits like dark chocolate. Winman's prose is poetry, with a rhythm, a heartbeat, that carries you through like music -- Emma Hooper, author of ETTA AND OTTO AND RUSSELL AND JAMES The central character is, of course, Marvellous herself whose radical perspective frequently disarmed me. She’s someone who prizes the stripped-down simplicity of the world over heedless progress: “Some things are best left untouched, she said. Tides rise and tides fall. That is perfection enough.” She communes with inanimate objects which sounds fanciful but comes across as a deep, meaningful conversation she’s having with herself more than the world around her. Over the course of the novel, we learn about the three great loves of her life. Her first lover was a woman, but rather than dwelling upon trying to define sexuality its refreshing how she moves from that to relationships with men without ponderous reflection or attributing any meaning to it. She’s also someone dealing with dementia and her struggle with the loss of memory is meaningfully related. She is particularly good at bringing the sensations of landscape to bear - its smell, sound and look - and in Marvellous has created a character of warmth and eccentricity * Metro * What do you think about the relationship between Francis and Marvellous? Memory is a central theme in the book – do you think it was presented as something that is reliable? How did you feel about the element of magic in the book – did it intrigue you or turn you off?verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ Marvellous Ways is eighty-nine years old and has lived alone in a remote Cornish creek for nearly all her life. Lately she's taken to spending her days sitting on a mooring stone by the river with a telescope. She's waiting for something - she's not sure what, but she'll know it when she sees it. Drake is a young soldier left reeling by the Second World War. When his promise to fulfil a dying man's last wish sees him wash up in Marvellous' creek, broken in body and spirit, the old woman comes to his aid. It’s Good Friday and the start of a four day weekend so there’s no excuse not to snuggle up with a cup of tea and a good book. The latest Book Club review comes once again from Emma Kingston from Year of the Yes. Ridicule, misunderstanding – Marvellous is by no means a conventional woman of thought or deed and has consequently suffered for it – lost love, missed opportunities, a fractured family whose gaps have been filled by fancy and imagination, all could be considered to have blighted her life.

It is the story of eighty-nine-year-old Marvellous Ways, whose mystical and intriguing world centres round a creek in Cornwall. Marvellous has many tales to tell, but she is waiting for one last story to become part of her own, that of Francis Drake. Probably that everybody has a story, you know, and people who are invisible in the world have an equal story to us, maybe a little bit more extraordinary at times. But everybody deserves to be listened to, and deserves to be seen. I suppose we’re entering a phase in society where a lot of people are invisible today, and I hope it’s a story that makes one section of society a little bit more visible. A gripping waiting game ... The novel's surprising denouement is also well worth the wait * Observer * A Year of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman, author When God Was a Rabbit, is such a book, richly told in ways so breathtakingly heartfelt and lovely that you wish you could stay in its richly-wrought world, communing with its quirky but thoughtfully intense characters forever.Alas, all books must end but while you are in the middle of Winman’s ode to connectedness, healing and musings on whether it is possible to experience great heartache and pain and move on through life, you are deep in a world where the lost are not spared pain but find their way through it, where hope and romance find you in the least expected and most imaginative of ways and where your past is not a determinant of your future but simply a part of you that is carried forward by life in all its manifest, contrary complexity. Certainly Marvellous, a spry woman who swims naked in the creek near her caravan, who lies a candle in the half-sunken church that sits in an island between the waters and who lives and eat off the land that is her home and a character in itself, has had reason enough to give up on life on many occasions.

Yeah, totally. She has come to that space, and you do see it with some older people that they are very comfortable with who they are. They’re comfortable with their past and with where they are in their present, and they’re not holding onto a future because they know that every day might be their last one, really. So, yeah I like the way she came out. Both Marvellous and Francis have tales of love and loss to tell, though their lives were seemingly worlds apart. An array of entrancing stories from them both are littered throughout, but they are perfectly knitted together – during the course of which dreams are shattered, realities made and magic happens. The Winter Book Club gave me the perfect opportunity to give Sarah Winman’s latest offering a queue jump. And while she admits to pain and loss and regret – there is no attempt by her to whitewash life; she admits to the worst but keeps aiming and hoping for the best, testament to the power of belief and expectation – she refuses to let them define her life or her attitude to its living. Hi Sarah. Congratulations on being chosen to take part in the Richard and Judy Book Club Spring 2016! How did it feel to find out A Year of Marvellous Ways had been selected?

Footer

As grounded in thought as Marvellous is in the wild and manmade worlds around her, Winman’s book accepts the grave realities of life but refuses to accept them as the be-all and end-all. What was the biggest challenge for you when writing the book? Was it the characters, or finding the journey or…? The stories are touching and the twist of magical realism lends them a joyful, fairytale element * Daily Record *

And just to finish: who was your favourite author as a child, and who is your favourite author today? Well, interesting – as a child, I hated reading! Well, ‘hated’, that’s a very strong word. No, it wasn’t really a part of my life, I am not a natural reader, that’s what I tell myself. It wasn’t really something that bedded down very early. Now I always have to add this as a caveat, because it drives my mum bananas: she did read to me as a child, and my father did. They bought me books, they took me to libraries, I couldn’t sit still! My imagination wasn’t one that was ignited by words, it was very much ignited by images, and me being out and about. So I don’t have one, but I do remember three books: Flat Stanley, Stig of the Dump, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, they were the three books that I do remember. And then I went out duly and imitated those lives out in the recreation ground. Nor that pain, suffering, broken hearts and bodies can be ignored simply by the power of positive thinking. There are a host of other characters who come in and out of the lives of these three main characters, all of whom are wounded or lost in some way. Waiting is what 89-year old Marvellous spends the year 1947 doing, in an isolated Cornish hamlet, although she isn’t sure what she is waiting for. This might seem like a less-than-engaging narrative device, but Sarah Winman creates gripping suspense while unfolding Marvellous’s memories, from lonely nights spent “willing her life to change” to the time “Whatshisname” was lured in her direction by a Louis Armstrong song playing on the wireless. Paths cross in unexpected ways in this pacey plot. An unlikely friendship develops at the core of the compelling tale when Marvellous meets a troubled young soldier, Drake. Storytelling rejuvenates Drake: as Marvellous shares stories of her life resonating with the transcendent power of love, Drake learns how to marvel at life again, seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. “Everyone had a limit,” writes Winman, engrossingly showing characters pushed past their breaking point. The novel’s surprising denouement is also well worth the wait. .A breathtaking reading experience... a beautiful book that is unafraid to reveal the ugliness of the world * Toronto Star * If you have been reading along with me – I would love to hear what you thought in the comments below. As is standard, in all my book club geekery, I have fished out some questions for you to muse on: What is so appealing about A Year of Marvellous Ways in that in its pursuit of magical joy and hope, again expressed in ways so lyrical your heart will dance as you read, it doesn’t pretend that everything will be all right as some kind of foregone conclusion.