The Singleton family from Blackburn spend their 1959 Wakes Week, the local shutdown holiday, in Blackpool, along with plenty of others from their hometown. This story is a week in the company of upwardly mobile housewife Ruth, her husband Jack who is harbouring his own secrets and ambitions, sixteen year old Helen who is impatient to become a youth of the sixties, and seven year old Beth who is recovering from a serious illness and is being very coddled against her will as a result. I loved it.

I found the story absorbing and interesting, full of period colour. The characters are fabulous and I really cared about them. I liked the way the flashbacks were separated completely from the 1959 story. And the integration of I-Spy books (a staple of my 1970s childhood too, and still going strong for my daughter except Big Chief I-Spy of Wigwam-by-the-water has been replaced by Michelin's Bibendum) is completely brilliant. I rarely read the little chapter heading quotes in books, this book is very much the exception, the I-Spy quotes really made the book.

There are places where the author's knowledge of Lancashire cotton mills becomes a bit too "look how well I've done my research" and there's an epilogue which was nice but I thought it might have been a stronger book if the future beyond the summer holiday had been left to the reader's imagination, it would have had less "feel good"-ness about it then though.

I found the book via Goodreads recommendations and will be looking them up again! ( )

It’s summer, 1959, and we join the Singleton family for their annual week-long holiday at The Belvedere in Blackpool. On the surface, all seems well with Jack, Ruth and their daughters, seven year-old Beth and sixteen year-old Helen. But despite appearances, none of them is truly happy. Beth, not long out of hospital, just wanting to fill in her I-Spy book and fit in, is being smothered by an overprotective Ruth. Helen is basically a good girl but really longs for a bit of freedom: deceit may be her only option while Ruth holds the reins tight. Ruth’s burning ambition is a new semi-detached house on Boundary Drive, but Jack doesn’t want to be saddled with a mortgage. And Jack is weighing up job offers against a sense of responsibility to his family and co-workers as well as mulling over a letter from Crete, a potential threat to his marriage if the secret from his wartime past is revealed.Sallie Day’s stirring descriptions of the town and its associated attractions and distractions take us back to that time with consummate ease. Her characters have real depth and she conveys their emotions and feelings so well that their joys, fears, insecurities, frustrations and guilt are palpable. This story will resonate with anyone who grew up in the late fifties. If they did that growing up in England, the mention of the various household names from that time will evoke the sights, sounds, tastes and smells of their childhood. This expertly crafted story takes some unexpected turns and keeps the reader captivated. The excerpts from I-Spy at the Seaside which head each chapter are echoed in that chapter: a delightful touch. Altogether a brilliant read! ( )

Sad, wearisome, but well-written. ( )

This started out rather hard to follow and overly wordy, but settled down by chapter two. The picture it painted of Blackpool in the late '50s was vivid and believable, and the characters well drawn. I liked the way the author observed small but telling details (eg at one point in the story Ruth has a pebble stuck in her shoe but is too angry to stop and shift it), this provided illumination without the need for acres of description. I wouldn't call the story 'delightful' as is claimed on the cover - it was quite hard-hitting in a gentle sort of way, raising many questions as it went along. Ironically I thought the plot strand to which the title relates was one of the weaker elements of the story, but it clearly provided an eye-catching title for a first novel. ( )

Jack, a foreman at a mill, his wife Ruth, and his two daughters, Helen and Beth, have gone on their annual holiday to Blackpool. It's 1959 and it's the wakes week, the week when all the Lancashire mills close and everybody takes a holiday. It seems that most people descend on Blackpool (it can't have been much fun spending your holiday with people you work with every day!).

This is not quite a dysfunctional family, but the reader can't help but feel sorry for Jack. Ruth is an obsessive cleaner, and keeps Helen (aged 15) and Beth (aged 7) on a very tight rein. Beth is recovering from a heart operation but longs to be let out of her woollen vest and boyish shorts and to be able to roam Blackpool looking for sightings for her I-Spy book. Helen is on the cusp of womanhood, but is not allowed to be anything but a girl. The reader feels her pleasure when she is allowed to buy a previously forbidden item of clothing. Jack, meanwhile, is longing for a life that he thought he had lost forever.

This is a great first novel, and I look foward to seeing what Sallie Day comes up with next. The book is very evocative of the era, just before the liberations of the 1960s, when everything was still quite repressed from the war years. The author has made Ruth a difficult character to take to, and yet the reader knows that everything she does is done with the best of intentions. Beth, in particular, is a lovely character, fragile but wanting to be free of restraints.

Overall, an excellent read and a little slice of history. This was a book that I looked forward to picking up and reading at every opportunity. ( )