13 June 2012

The Sweet-Smelling Jasmine

The Sweet Smelling JasmineThe Sweet Smelling Jasmine by Jenny Hobbs

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A middle-aged suburban housewife, trapped in a marriage that has lost its lustre, meets a friend she had known as a teenager in a sugar mill town on the Natal coast, where she had gone to stay with her sister and brother-in-law after her father had died. Her friend has become a writer, and encourages her to write the story of the long-ago summer when they first met, which had begun with new friendships, her first love, and yet ended in horror, violence and death. Though the book is full of ordinary people, living ordinary lives, it is also an enthralling story about growing up in the 1950s, with teenage fears and anxieties, joys and embarassments.



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