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    The Colour of Milk: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Colour of Milk: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Colour of Milk: A Novel
    Ebook178 pages3 hours

    The Colour of Milk: A Novel

    By Nell Leyshon

    4.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The Colour of Milk is a literary tour de force of power, class, and fate, told in the fierce, urgent voice of the irrepressible Mary, a character as indelible as The Color Purple’s Celie and Margaret Atwood’s eponymous Alias Grace.

    Set in England in 1830, The Colour of Milk by Nell Leyshon is an emotionally haunting work of historical fiction — hailed as “charming, Brontë-esque...and hard to forget” (Marian Keyes) — about an illiterate farm girl’s emotional and intellectual awakening and its devastating consequences.

    Mary, the spirited youngest daughter of an angry, violent man, is sent to work for the local vicar and his invalid wife. Her strange new surroundings offer unsettling challenges, including the vicar’s lecherous son and a manipulative fellow servant. But life in the vicarage also offers unexpected joys, as the curious young girl learns to read and write — knowledge that will come at a tragic price.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateDec 26, 2012
    ISBN9780062192073
    Unavailable
    The Colour of Milk: A Novel
    Author

    Nell Leyshon

    Nell Leyshon is a novelist and award-winning playwright, with work broadcast on Radio 3 and Radio 4 and published by Oberon Books. She was brought up in Glastonbury and lives in Bournemouth.

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    Reviews for The Colour of Milk

    4.5/5

    13 ratings4 reviews

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    • 3/5
      This book did not end like I wanted it to. I enjoyed MOsT of it though.
    • 4/5
      A farm in the 1830's, 4 girls live with their mother and their abusive father on a farm, where they are worked from sunup until sundown. The youngest, Mary, who is 14 is sent to help the local preacher with his wife who is ill. Mary is very special, it is her journal, her story we read, and it is written simply and rather starkly to reflect the circumstances in which she lives. Her reading and writing has come at a high cost to herself, but it is the one thing she can do to make her grandfather proud. It is her relationship with her grandfather that I feel is particularly poignant, it is where she gets most of the love that is in her young life. This book will not appeal to everyone but I do believe it will appeal to those who like Jessamyn Ward and Bonnie Jo Campbell. The ending did rather shock me, it was not at all what I was expecting. Not a happy ever after kind of book.
    • 5/5
      i am stopping now for i need to lay down and rest. there is much to tell for you need to know it all and then you will understand. my arm aches. my hand has the cramps. if i close my eyes i can go back and remember everything. – from The Colour of Milk -Mary is fourteen, born with a crippled leg on a farm in England in the early part of the nineteenth century. When her story opens, the year is 1831. Mary and her three sisters are growing up under the iron hand of their brutal father. They slave in the fields all day, a thankless and endless job. It is Mary who stands up to her father’s rage, who speaks her mind, who cares deeply about her disabled grandfather who lives in the apple room. When Mary’s father sends her to live with a local vicar and his ill wife, Mary goes but not without protest. She now works as a housemaid and her wages go to her father. She sleeps in a bed beneath the eaves, rises early each day, and observes the new world of the vicarage which surprisingly offers her a chance to learn to read and write. But the joy of books comes with a price – one which will change Mary forever.The Colour of Milk is written in the brave voice of Mary whose courage, humor, and spunk shine through her awkward sentences. Mary’s life is one of toil, yet she finds the beauty in fields and animals, the changing colors of the sky, and the simplicity of her life. She knows that life should be more, but she does not know how to label her dreams. i watched as the sky changed its colours and the sun climbed upwards. when i stood up i could see the farm and the shape of the house and the lane and the fields. what was it i would dream if i could dream something and it would come true? what was it i would say if anyone ever asked me? i didn’t know. i knew i had dreams but i didn’t know what they were. - from The Colour of Milk -The last thing Mary expects from life is the gift of reading and writing. The pain of being torn from her beloved grandfather and sisters and mother is eased initially by the simple joy of learning.i looked along the lines till i found three of them. the the the. i closed the book and leaned over and blew out the candle. the smell of the taper was in the room. an owl called outside the window. - from The Colour of Milk -As Mary’s words took me deeper into her life, I found myself feeling uneasy. It was clear she was writing retrospectively and as the end of her story grew near it began to vibrate with apprehension. And when the ending did come, it made me gasp.I cannot say more about this book without ruining it for the reader. Leyshon’s writing is powerful, incredibly moving, and filled with a grace that many authors are not able to find in their prose. This is a penetrating and compelling look into the life of one young girl during a time in history when women were considered property and had no real rights. It is shocking, empathetic and provocative.When I turned the final page of this slim novel, I had to sit for awhile allowing the power of Mary’s words to wash over me as tears welled in my eyes. I would not be surprised to see The Colour of Milk on the prize lists this year, but even if it is not recognized as the great literature that I think it is, it will certainly be on my list of best books read in 2013.Highly, highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      This is a small book, but it feels very substantial. Because it contains a unique voice, and a story that voice it wants to tell so very, very much. “this is my book and i am writing it by my own hand. i want to tell you what it is that happened but i must be ware not to rush at it like the heifers at a gate for if i do that i will get ahead of myself so quick that i will trip and fall and anyway you will want me to start where a person ought to. and that is at the beginning.” The style is idiosyncratic and the voice is distinctive. It only took a few pages for me to settle in, and then I wanted to know Mary’s story just as much she wanted to tell it. I could hear her voice in my head, and at the same time I was asking myself questions. How was it that, in 1831, a poor farm girl had learned how to read and write? And whatever had happened, over the course of the four seasons of one year, to make the telling of her story so very urgent? Mary was the fourth child, and the fourth daughter of a farmer. A man who wanted sons, and when they didn’t arrive he began to take his frustration, his anger, out on his wife and daughters. They were cowed by him but there was also a camaraderie, a sisterhood between them. Mary often caught the worst of his temper. Because she had spirit and a very natural honesty. She took such delight in life and the world around her that she was terribly easily distracted from what she was supposed to be doing. It wasnt;t that she was unwilling to work, but other things called so much louder. (I understood. I’m the same with housework and books …) Maybe that’s why her father pushed Mary forward when the local vicar came looking for a domestic servant. Mary’s candour and personality endear her to the vicar’s invalid wife. He is pleased, he is eager to help the girl, but he is heedless of the possible consequences. And a son, who has crossed paths with Mary’s family before, looks on. The seasons pass. Relationships grow. but other things changes. The story that unfolds has familiar elements, echoes of other stories, but it uses them very cleverly to create something a little different. I had an idea of what would happen, and often I was right. But not always, and the ending made me catch my breath. The prose is sparse, the story is short, and yet it holds so much. Every character is simply but perfectly drawn, and each and every one is important. Just a few words of description, a few words of dialogue painted wonderful pictures of lives and relationships. And of a place and time. This is a story utterly of its time, and yet it is a story that says things about relationships between families, between sexes, between classes, that a 19th century novel never could. But the best thing of all was Mary’s voice. She never faltered. Her voice rang true. And, even now I have put the book down, she and her story continue to haunt me.