Ruby Lennox was conceived grudgingly by Bunty and born while her father, George, was in the Dog and Hare in Doncaster telling a woman in an emerald dress and a D-cup that he wasn't married. Bunty had never wanted to marry George but he was all that was left. She really wanted to be Vivien Leigh or Celia Johnson, swept off to America by a romantic hero. But here she was, stuck in a flat above the pet shop in an ancient street beneath York Minster, with sensible and sardonic Patricia aged five, greedy cross-patch Gillian who refused to be ignored, and Ruby...
Ruby tells the story of The Family, from the day at the end of the nineteenth century when a travelling French photographer catches frail beautiful Alice and her children, like flowers in amber, to the startling, witty, and memorable events of Ruby's own life.
Winner of the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year.
A debut novel of astonishing confidence and skill ... Acutely observant, overflowing with good jokes, it is the work of an author who loves her characters and sets them playing with gleeful energy.
The Spectator
An astounding book ... without doubt one of the finest novels I have read for years.
The Times
