A single thread. Tracy Chevalier. 2019.

A single thread. Tracy Chevalier. 2019.

It is 1932, and the losses of the First World War are still keenly felt. Violet Speedwell, mourning for both her fiancé and her brother and regarded by society as a ‘surplus woman’ unlikely to marry, resolves to escape her suffocating mother and strike out alone.

A new life awaits her in Winchester. Yes, it is one of draughty boarding-houses and sidelong glances at her naked ring finger from younger colleagues; but it is also a life gleaming with independence and opportunity. Violet falls in with the broderers, a disparate group of women charged with embroidering kneelers for the Cathedral, and is soon entwined in their lives and their secrets. As the almost unthinkable threat of a second Great War appears on the horizon Violet collects a few secrets of her own that could just change everything…

Warm, vivid and beautifully orchestrated, A Single Thread reveals one of our finest modern writers at the peak of her powers.

My opinion:

This is the first novel I've read of Tracy Chevalier, and it will not be the last one, because I like her rhythms, her pauses, her form of describing the landscapes and the situations and the characters.

With a sensibility and feminine touch that made me fall in love in the first lines. Chevalier has woven a beautiful story with the spectacular background of the Cathedral of Winchester and their Embroiderers.

If I can applaud a book, I applaud A Single Thread.