Sometimes real life can be stranger than fiction. Join us for a nonfiction book club discussion of This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing: a Memoir by Jacqueline Winspear. Copies of the book are available for checkout in the library.
After sixteen novels, Jacqueline Winspear has taken the bold step of turning to memoir, revealing the hardships and joys of her family history. Both shockingly frank and deftly restrained, her memoir tackles such difficult, poignant, and fascinating family memories as her paternal grandfather's shellshock, her mother's evacuation from London during the Blitz; her soft-spoken animal-loving father's torturous assignment to an explosives team during WWII; her parents' years living with Romani Gypsies; and Jacqueline's own childhood working on farms in rural Kent, capturing her ties to the land and her dream of being a writer at its very inception. An eye-opening and heartfelt portrayal of a post-War England we rarely see, This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing is the story of a childhood in the English countryside, of working class indomitability and family secrets, of artistic inspiration and the price of memory
We will be meeting in-person in the Library as well as virtually! Please register for both in-person and virtual attendance. The Zoom meeting info will be sent via email.