Nevermore

Linda Newbery is renowned for her empathetic handling of historical settings and relationship dilemmas. In her latest novel, for pre-teenage readers, she shows how the events and relationships of a family in the recent past have dramatic repercussions on its latest generation.

Tizzie and her single parent mum are constantly on the move, but when her mum lands a job as cook at a big house she encounters a household with a hidden past who eagerly await the return of the absent owner and his daughter Greta.

Newbery's intricately delicate descriptions and characterisation produce realistic individuals, shaped by their past experience and that of others. Tizzie's subsequent discoveries about her own background are handled with great sensitivity in this moving novel.