How can you ever know yourself when you were deprived of love as a child?

It’s the 1970s, and Sarah has spent a lifetime trying to bury her disjointed childhood, the loneliness of her school days, and Fane, the vast and crumbling family home so loved – and hated – by her mother, Iris, a woman as cruel as she is beautiful. Sarah’s solace has been her cello and the music that allowed her to dream, transporting her from the bleakness of those early years to a new life now with Daniel, her husband, in their noisy Hampstead home surrounded by bohemian friends and with a concert career that has brought her fame and restored a sense of self.

The past, though, has a habit of creeping into the present, and as long as Sarah tries to escape, it seems the pull of Fane, her mother, and the secrets of the generations hidden there, are slowly being revealed, threatening to unravel the fragile happiness she enjoys in the here and now. Sarah will need to travel back to Fane to confront her childhood and search for the true meaning of home.

Deliciously absorbing and rich with character and atmosphere, The Stargazers is the story of a house, a family, and the legacies of childhoods fractured through time and inheritance.

My Review

“She’d never had a birthday party, or sat on her mother’s knee. She’d never been hugged when someone waits for you outside school, crouching at your level, smiling broadly, arms flung wide.”

Gosh, this really resonated with me.

The book is written in three timelines though Iris’s childhood only features fairly briefly. Mostly it’s about Sarah as a child in the 1950s, living with her sister Victoria, and their mother Lady Iris Fane. Their father Henry Fox (the girls have his name Fox, but Iris has reverted to her maiden name of Fane), appears to be totally absent.

Then we have Sarah as an adult in the 1970s, married to Daniel (who is lovely but would annoy me if he was my husband) and their life in a crumbling house in Hampstead. It’s a house they can’t afford and Daniel’s attempts at DIY always end in disaster. After a childhood in a crumbling mansion, I am surprised that Sarah wants to live here, but then I suppose for her it’s normal. Daniel invites his bohemian friends and half the neighbours to drop round all the time and Sarah can’t cope. I’m not sure I would be able to.

Iris is truly awful. The girls have been dragged away from a flat in London to Fane Hall, which is freezing all the time, full of dust and dead flies, and stinks of the fossilised bodily waste of the soldiers who lived there during the war. They never have any clothes or shoes that aren’t too small, or enough food to eat. Iris never feeds them. They have to fend for themselves. They are sent away to a second rate boarding school for the children of parents who want to be rid of them, but it is here that Sarah can realise her talent for the cello. The other girls are truly horrible (apart from Monica) and Sarah’s sister does almost nothing to defend her.

Iris is obsessed with the house being hers and not her Uncle Clive’s and they argue and fight all the time. At times I found the girls’ childhood very hard to read, but then I had a mother who suffered from chronic anxiety and agoraphobia, and never left her room for many years. However, she wasn’t cruel, adored cats, and collected them like other people collect postage stamps, and certainly never hit us. And I had my beloved father and grandmother to feed and clothe us, and keep us warm. It did make me wonder though if Iris had a serious mental illness.

The twist at the end was so unexpected, I gasped. I certainly never saw it coming. This is one of my favourite books of the year, like The Beloved Girls by the same author in 2021.

Many thanks to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Just as an aside, walking back from yoga this morning, in broad daylight (it was about 10.30am) a mother was reprimanding her daughter (aged about 8 or 9). She suddenly slapped the girl across the face so hard I heard the sound of her hand connecting with the girl’s cheek. The girl began to cry and the mother kept saying ‘stop crying, stop crying.’ My friend tried to intervene but the woman ignored her. I was horrified and I immediately thought of Iris and Sarah in that one awful scene.

About the Author

“I was born in London and grew up there. I was very bookish, and had a huge imagination which used to cause me to get rather anxious at times. Now I know it’s a good thing for a writer to have. I loved musicals, and playing imaginative games, and my Barbie perfume making kit. Most of all I loved reading. I read everything, but I also read lots of things over and over, which I think is so important.

“At university I read Classical Studies, which is a great way of finding out that the world doesn’t change much and people make the same mistakes but it’s interesting to look at why. I was at Bristol, and i loved the city, making new friends, being a new person.

“After university I came back to London and got a job in publishing. I loved working in publishing so much, and really felt for the first time in my life that when I spoke people understood what I was saying. Book people are good people. I became an editor after a few years, working with many bestselling novelists, and in 2009 I left to write full time.

“I’ve written 13 novels and several short stories and one Quick Read, which is an excellent way of getting people into reading more. I’ve acquired a partner and two children along the way.

“In 2019 we moved to Bath, out of London, and I am very happy there. We live opposite a hedgerow, and I can be boring about gardening, and there’s room for my collection of jumpsuits and all our books. We have lots of books. Apart from anything else they keep the house warm.”