Kissing Alice

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2010 MCKITTERICK PRIZE



Arthur Craythorne has barely married Queenie May when he is called away to fight in the First World War. When he returns from the trenches, he is a changed man and his wife and two young daughters, Alice and Florrie, strive hard to steer clear of his aggression and make him proud.



Although Florrie follows Arthur into the Catholic Church, it is Alice he seems to favour, and Florrie seethes with envy of her sister as she watches them grow closer. But Arthur's attentions towards Alice prove darker than either of them can yet acknowledge, and when Arthur dies, the three women he leaves behind must each find ways to cope with all that remains unspoken between them.



Jacqueline Yallop read English at Oxford and did her PhD in nineteenth-century literature at Sheffield University. She has worked as the Curator for the John Ruskin Museum in Sheffield and is the author of the non-fiction work Magpies,Squirrels and Thieves and the novel Obedience. She currently lives in France.



Jacqueline Yallop's haunting debut novel takes us back to the early half of the 20th century... Yallop has a beady eye for period detail and a wise understanding of psychology. Kissing Alice would be a great choice for book clubs, where readers could spend hours picking over the rights and wrongs of each sister's behaviour and analysing the effects of their traumatic childhood.



There is something defiantly old-fashioned about Yallop's first novel... [Her] 1920s and 1930s have an authentically grainy feel... A very plausible portrait of messy sibling love.



A dark story of love, loss and family...[An] accomplished debut.