Spilt Milk by Amanda Hodgkinson
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Blurb: 1913. Unmarried sisters Nellie and Vivian Marsh live an impoverished existence in a tiny cottage on the banks of the Little River in Suffolk. Their life is quiet and predictable, until a sudden flood throws up a strange fish on their doorstep and a travelling man who will change them forever. 1939. Eighteen-year-old Birdie Farr is working as a barmaid in the family pub in London. When she realises she is pregnant she turns to her mother Nellie, who asks her sister to arrange an adoption for Birdie’s new born daughter. But as the years pass Birdie discovers she cannot escape the Marsh sisters’ shadowy past – and her own troubling obsession with finding her lost daughter will have deep consequences for all of them. (Penguin, February 2014)
Rachel Hore, The Independent
“Hodgkinson’s lush descriptions of country life are one of the book’s many pleasures. She also knows the right words to crack open a woman’s heart and reveal the tenderness within. This is a story that explores mother-hood and sisterhood with great subtlety and power.”
Isabel Berwick, The Financial Times
“Spilt Milk is a refracted version of real life, that impossible mess we inherit and muddle through, yet transmuted here into something shining and meaningful, told in beautiful prose.”
Elizabeth Buchan, The Daily Mail
“In this quietly engrossing saga, the men and women who thread in and out of the sister’s lives are never as strong as the ghost of the river cottage.”
Jane Housham, The Guardian
“Alas, the wheels of this particular period of history trundle over fairly well-worn ruts so you can tick off the milestones as they pass by. Yet this is a soapy, eventful saga expertly paced and delivering doses of emotion as efficiently as an intravenous drip.”
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