About the book…
Set against the lush backdrop of early 20th-century India, In the Mirror, a Peacock Danced – the debut novel from Justine Bothwick – is the moving story of one woman’s journey back to herself.
Agra, 1938: Eighteen-year-old Florence Hunt has grown up riding horses past the Taj Mahal and chasing peacocks through her backyard under the critical gaze of her father. Increasingly enamoured with his work on the booming railway, Florence yearns to know more, but finds herself brushed away, encouraged only to perform the more ladylike hobbies of singing and entertaining guests. So when a dazzling young engineer walks into her life, she finds herself not only gripped by secret lessons in physics but swept entirely off her feet.
Portsmouth, 1953: Fifteen years later, Florence finds herself pregnant and alone in post-war England – a far cry from her sun-drenched existence in India. Struggling to cope with the bleakness of everyday life in a male-dominated world, Florence is desperate to find the woman she used to be. But when someone from her past reaches out, Florence might just have a chance to start over.
Soaring from the shimmering heights of the big top to the depths of heartbreak, can Florence find the happiness, independence, and passion she once had in order to start living again?
Enormous thanks to the awesome Peyton Stableford at Agora for the invitation to read ‘In The Mirror A Peacock Danced’, the debut novel by Justine Bothwick.
I loved loved loved this book, Florence , is a character who quickly steals your heart and, I feel, it is a very timely novel. The difference between cultures, and the way that she is treated as a white woman in India, versus a single mother of a bi-racial child in post-war Britain, is truly prescient.
There is such a disconnect between what society, seen in the patriarchal form of her father, expects of her, and the way she wants to live in a world of colour and freedom.
Instead, she is paraded by her father and made to sing at functions, she lacks a voice because there is no one listening to her. The women around her think no further than getting married to English men and being introduced into ‘society’. Meanwhile, Florence wants the freedom to swing trhough the air with the circus, a place where there is a sense of managed danger, unpredictability and zero expectations.
The novel flips between her life in India, and her life with a 5 year old son, living in the basement of a very disapproving aunt. She again is a square peg in a round hole, a woman with skills and intelligence who is fascinated by engineering and production, yet caught in that awkward place where men were returning home from the war, and not exactly happy to find women working.
Her intelligence and forthrightness are smothered whilst she does her best to provide a stable home for her son, and the historical aspects of the era of Indian Partition and the re-establishment of world super powers in the aftermath of World War 2 show a woman trying to plant her feet in a world which is rapidly shifting underneath her.
I would thoroughly recommend this jewel bright, verdant novel to anyone who loves books with a strong female voice, and those who love historical fiction. Justine is a new voice who I am eager to follow through her writer’s journey.
About the author…
Justine Bothwick grew up in Kent and Hampshire, and studied in London. In 2005, she moved to Italy and now teaches English in an international secondary school in Rome.
She is married to a Roman architect. Together they have a flat in the city with a small balcony on which she grows her ever expanding collection of plants and watches the local birdlife.
Justine is a graduate of the Manchester Writing School’s Creative Writing MA programme. She has short stories published in The Lonely Crowd, Fictive Dream, Confingo Magazine, and Virtual Zine, and forthcoming with Nightjar Press. Her work was highly commended in the Bath Short Story Award 2020. Her debut novel – In the Mirror, a Peacock Danced – will be published with Agora Books in June 2021.
Author
bridgeman.lenny@gmail.com