#BlogTour-‘Dignity’ by Alys Conran

About the book-

‘Beautiful’ Claire Fuller, author of Bitter Orange
‘Exquisite’ Fiona McFarlane, author of The Night Guest
‘Beguiling’ Guinevere Glasfurd, author of The Words In My Hand

‘An Indian household can no more be governed peacefully without dignity and prestige, than an Indian Empire’ The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook, Flora Annie Steel & Grace Gardiner

Magda is a former scientist with a bad temper and a sharp tongue, living alone in a huge house by the sea. Confined to a wheelchair, her once spotless home crumbling around her, she gets through carers at a rate of knots.

Until Susheela arrives, bursting through the doors of Magda’s house, carrying life with her: grief for her mother’s recent death; worry for her father; longing for a beautiful and troubled young man.

The two women strike up an unlikely friendship: Magda’s old-fashioned, no-nonsense attitude turns out to be an unexpected source of strength for Susheela; and Susheela’s Bengali heritage brings back memories of Magda’s childhood in colonial India and resurrects the tragic figure of her mother, Evelyn, and her struggle to fit within the suffocating structure of the Raj’s ruling class.

But as Magda digs deeper into her past, she unlocks a shocking legacy of blood that threatens to destroy the careful order she has imposed on her life – and that might just be the key to give the three women, Evelyn, Magda and Susheela, a place they can finally call home.

HUGE thanks to the tremendous Tracy Fenton and the team at Orion for my gifted copy of Dignity.

Wow. What can I say?

This book left me with such a severe book hangover-here are 3 women, looking for a place which they can call home, but where do they belong?

Is belonging something that happens when it’s a state of contentment with who you are or does it depend on a geographical place?

Their individual and group journeys are so beautifully wrought it was an anguish to walk away from them-dignity is a thing they strive to maintain  but for some reason,each finds it impossible.

Magda’s only recourse to maintaining hers is the control she has over carers, finding fault with each of them until they quit. The only one she relates to is Susheela because she reminds her of her childhood in India.

Susheela is frustrated by the role she plays as a carer, she is compromised by time and feels dignity for her clients is being  by it.

Evelyn is the one who links them both-it is her voice that related to me the most. She is a woman living at the time of colonial rule in India, shipped off to marry a husband whether she likes it or not, and has to maintain a dignified silence about it. She has a strict code to live by and despite having servants they are little better than spies who monitor her every move and how she is supposed to behave.

Her narrative broke me a lot,the expectations on a young woman with no life experience being sent so far away was horrific and harks back to an inglorious part of Britain’s past was just heartbreaking and awful.

The 3 narratives are so distinct, yet woven together through pure poetry and divine plotting to make a remarkable and unforgettable whole.

Who we belong to, and who belongs to us, in the sense of the Welsh word hiraeth is so much more than blood or marriage, it relates to the self actualised concept of dignity and love.

Highly recommended, as is Alys’ previous book, ‘Pigeon’, ‘Dignity’ is available now in hardback, audiobook and ebook formats.

About the author-

Alys Conran’s first novel, ‘Pigeon’ (Parthian Books, 2016) was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and won Wales Book of the Year 2017. She has been awarded an AHRC scholarship to write a second novel about the legacy of the Raj in contemporary British life.

Her short fiction has been placed in competitions including The Bristol Short Story Prize and the Manchester Fiction Prize and her work is to be found in many magazines and anthologies including Stand and The Manchester Review.

A fluent speaker of Welsh, English, Spanish and Catalan, she studied at Edinburgh, Barcelona and Manchester and is now Lecturer in Creative Writing at Bangor, where she is originally from.

Links-https://www.alysconran.com/about

 https://www.compulsivereaders.com/

https://www.newwelshreview.com/article.php?id=2364

Twitter @alysconran

@Tr4cyF3nt0n