Book review: The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir
She harnesses the epistolary form to great effect, allowing each of her female protagonists to have their own voice, through their letters and diary entries.
It begins with a funeral and a notice pinned to Chilbury village hall noticeboard stating the village choir will close as ‘all our male voices have gone to war’.
It ends with an unexpected wedding and a choir of ladies who have banded together to support each other through love and loss, childbirth and a village bombing.
The descriptions of the togetherness of a choir are spot-on, but the only slightly jarring note is the volume of dialogue written in letters, without which much of the action would be difficult to convey.
Impressively researched and tender debut.
