Girl With Dove: A Life Built By Books

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Girl With Dove: A Life Built By Books
Sally Bayley

‘The word “mesmerising” is frequently applied to memoirs, but seldom as deservedly as in the case of Girl With Dove’ Financial Times‘Reading is a form of escape and an avid reader is an escape artist…’Growing up in a dilapidated house by the sea where men were forbidden, Sally’s childhood world was filled with mystery and intrigue. Hippies trailed through the kitchen looking for God – their leader was Aunt Di, who ruled the house with charismatic force. When Sally’s baby brother vanishes from his pram, she becomes suspicious of the activities going on around her. What happened to Baby David and the woman called Poor Sue? And where did all the people singing and wailing prayers in the front room suddenly go?Disappearing into a world of books and reading, Sally adopts the tried and tested methods of Miss Marple. Taking books for hints and clues, she turns herself into a reading detective. Her discovery of Jane Eyre marks the beginning of a vivid journey through Victorian literature where she also finds the kind, eccentric figure of Charles Dickens’ Betsey Trotwood. These characters soon become her heroines, acting as a part of an alternative family, offering humour and guidance during many difficult moments in Sally’s life.Combining the voices of literary characters with those of her real-life counterparts, Girl With Dove reads as a magical series of strange encounters, climaxing with a comic performance of Shakespeare in the children’s home where Sally is eventually sent.Weaving literary classics with a young girl’s coming of age story, this is a book that testifies to the transformative power of reading and the literary imagination. Mixing fairy tale, literary classics, nursery rhymes and folklore, it is the story of a child’s adventure in wonderland and search for truth in an adult world often cast in deep shadow.

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Copyright (#u7bb41957-723c-5947-b51b-7ac46e8dbb73)

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

WilliamCollinsBooks.com (http://www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com)

This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2018

Copyright © Sally Bayley 2018

Cover photograph © Arcangel Images/Adam Bird

Cover design by Heike Schüssler

Sally Bayley Shipman asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Source ISBN: 9780008226855

Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008226879

Version: 2018-04-27

Dedication (#u7bb41957-723c-5947-b51b-7ac46e8dbb73)

For Angela Christine Bayley,

Soul of a Rose

Epigraph (#u7bb41957-723c-5947-b51b-7ac46e8dbb73)

‘Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.’

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (English edition, 1952, translated by Emma Crawford and Mario von der Ruhr)

Contents

Cover (#u60cd174c-df14-50ac-af69-54a409885dc5)

Title Page (#u351293cc-39d2-51bd-8e04-dca4c029cc44)

Copyright (#ue462ad1c-fcf9-590f-91c8-38173461630a)

Dedication (#u64a16a81-45cb-5bb5-8eae-51a04544be7b)

Epigraph (#ud9037fa2-f961-50ae-8306-8a57eecf73c7)

Preface: The Reader’s Backstory (#ue05975fb-de8f-5168-9da8-2befa155a211)

PART ONE (#ufffbab01-a7ea-5235-98a6-83317074f457)

1 Miss Marple (#ue9115b11-e0b3-540f-8131-e327b3e14541)

2 Grandmothers (#u9743e5db-16e1-5f4a-8e5b-7f1192e9f08d)

3 The Village (#u61095120-1d10-5029-8256-3acaf5958e84)

4 Jane Eyre and Verity (#ub0fa9318-b5f2-5d98-b4e9-64837719dae8)

5 Di (#u854c5090-4b9b-5b13-9e33-79659efcf289)

6 Behind Closed Doors (#u13750095-e51c-5932-bf1c-dbb5d5f49257)

7 Poor Sue (#u0c9a53e0-c36f-5e5b-ad6c-2c214f99482d)

8 Rocks from the Sky (#u6c24f831-2d46-52fe-8dd5-f4713cbebb19)

9 David Copperfield (#u3637ccb8-34ab-5129-83ab-63548da86b5c)

10 Peggotty (#ub66d3448-8e32-5471-8ebd-6bbfba453f20)

11 Betsey Trotwood (#u99e5e192-62a5-5d99-a89b-20ce9f1678be)

12 Hand-Me-Down Histories (#u790095e3-48e3-53a0-bf08-ae5b387b4e14)

PART TWO (#udc7ff949-0207-574b-8aeb-511b82c5eddd)

13 Aunt Jayne (#uc9da9ff2-f07f-5e89-8c00-f554400e4ef7)

14 The Silver Jubilee (#u6f067f90-9095-5118-a668-14da4e688502)

15 The Beach Hotel (#ufcc99891-0b32-5d7d-906b-3d7e842342f4)

16 A Murder is Announced (#ubc724c7d-3a5c-558d-b5ff-6c6890849e6f)

17 Margaret Thatcher Moves In (#u9e66257e-0aee-52f0-8d7a-748fa45adb1b)

18 The Estate (#uf821be4f-b692-532a-9ff7-21dac2affa4d)

19 A Few Facts (#u2bfa00e1-f9af-59fb-bbe7-f614345dc7bf)

20 Wedgwood in the Front Room (#u857ff196-3120-5f0f-98fb-8029da8921c6)

21 Learning to Speak Nicely (#udbfb4580-926c-5369-8ec5-7276db923eeb)

22 The Major and His Wife (#uc1fccb49-b9db-55a8-a958-0eafdad14122)

23 The Body in the Library (#u5aa77838-2769-52c6-896b-eb310df155da)

24 Bertha (#ubec03d1e-255a-5227-8de6-73f6b73b69ee)

PART THREE (#u830f28e9-e053-5588-8259-68d5832c1555)

25 On Her Small Brown Wings (#u9cf04cfc-4a6b-59a6-a6b5-613c5a9b8ec2)

26 Expert Opinions (#u4c834c0e-a320-5347-aede-f50db625b922)

27 Social Workers and Souls (#udc992f90-92ee-5ae4-aea0-52b3a650450a)

28 A Momentous Interview (#u66306f66-0c79-5e06-bebb-f434b05ff25e)

29 The Inexorable (#u75298ea4-6c0b-5a53-9c23-c79d9adf9766)

30 Colwood (#u3eb29c2a-27e1-581d-b8e3-bba7d58ce67e)

31 An Angry Goblin’s Cell (#u4fd1536b-7f56-5c5f-a503-02b029975b61)

32 The Story of Sue (#u1cfbdf55-593e-5399-a770-cc8f4012bbd3)

33 Crossing the Meadow (#u0fd3a3de-756e-5854-ab01-d4e24a1bb319)

34 A Winter’s Tale (#u8c601dbe-4c97-55b1-aa61-8ba8d7a08063)

35 The Great Gig in the Sky (#u29d652a6-99af-51ba-85fc-78241ac6519b)

36 The End (#ue6676e5d-07af-5a13-873e-abf9151f9f2c)

Afterword (#u2da94913-d112-5304-8810-7bf46d9de5fd)

Acknowledgements (#uae24c51d-aed4-52f5-9dcb-f81b9604547c)

Credits (#ufe56c25d-f83b-58ac-92e2-335717c53e12)

Also by Sally Bayley (#ubdd92751-e98b-58a5-a243-34a157177bc8)

About the Author (#u2ffe9fc5-065a-56f8-9e9e-3f804f72a748)

About the Publisher (#uf0d4077c-0230-511f-a290-0258eb148377)