Charms

by Jill Dawson

In the dead of night, Lily Waite and her 5-year-old son, Matthew, arrive at their new home on a council estate in East London; their only possessions, two suitcases and a bag of charred remains. Their past is a mystery, Matthew's father nowhere in evidence, and Lily resolute in her need for privacy. But Lily has to come to terms with the events that precipitated her flight from Yorkshire and, as she relaxes enough to allow new relationships into her and her son's life, the secrets of the past finally begin to relinquish their hold on the future.

Unknown Binding

First published November 5, 1998

About the author

Jill Dawson was born in Durham and grew up in Staffordshire, Essex and Yorkshire. She read American Studies at the University of Nottingham, then took a series of short-term jobs in London before studying for an MA in Writing at Sheffield Hallam University. In 1997 she was the British Council Writing Fellow at Amherst College, Massachussets.

Her writing life began as a poet, her poems being published in a variety of small press magazines, and in one pamphlet collection, White Fish with Painted Nails (1990). She won an Eric Gregory Award for her poetry in 1992.

She edited several books for Virago, including The Virago Book of Wicked Verse (1992) and The Virago Book of Love Letters (1994). She has also edited a collection of short stories, School Tales: Stories by Young Women (1990), and with co-editor Margo Daly, Wild Ways: New Stories about Women on the Road (1998) and Gas and Air: Tales of Pregnancy and Birth (2002). She is the author of one book of non-fiction for teenagers, How Do I Look? (1991), which deals with the subject of self-esteem.

Jill Dawson is the author of five novels: Trick of the Light (1996); Magpie (1998), for which she won a London Arts Board New Writers Award; Fred and Edie (2000); Wild Boy (2003); and most recently, Watch Me Disappear (2006). Fred and Edie is based on the historic murder trial of Thompson and Bywaters, and was shortlisted for the 2000 Whitbread Novel Award and the 2001 Orange Prize for Fiction.

Her next novel, The Great Lover, is due for publication in early 2009.

Jill Dawson has taught Creative Writing for many years and was recently the Creative Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia. She lives with her family in the Cambridgeshire Fens.

Reviews

[Michael Rumney · Rating 3 out of 5]

A young single mother moves with her son to London from the north. It follows her difficulties in settling into a new life.
The book is well written but with no definite conclusion and you get the feeling Lily will carry on in the same way and might learn from her mistakes before it's too late.

[sisterimapoet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read as part of my What's In A Name reading challenge.

The downside of having a new favourite author is that I approach each of her books with a mix of hope and dread. Hope that it will add to my opinion, dread that it might let me down.

The subject matter of 'Magpie' appeals less that the other Dawson books I've read. But I still loved it. Something about her style makes the character live far more vividly than in most other novels.

And every chapter or so she writes a description that almost floors me.

Now I'm starting to get anxious that there are only two more of her books that I havent read (one of which is waiting quietly on my To Be Read pile). I hope she writes another one soon.

The worship continues...

[Gail · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thought I was going to really like this, but it didn't go anywhere.

[Rue Baldry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yet another '90s London novel which doesn't really get anywhere. This time the protagonist is a woman, which makes a nice change, and she's a single mother whose child gets a fully developed character, which is also good and unusual.
There's meaningless, over-described, adulterous sex as usual, petty crimes, family back story, race, class and stripped pine as usual.
It's well written and I enjoyed it as I read it, but overall the experience was fairly forgettable. Jill Dawson's later books are much better IMHO.

[MJ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a horrible book but not one I would read again.
I found it lacking in any climax - and the abrupt ending left many questions left unanswered.
The fact that it was hard to get into kind of killed it for me.

[Mew · Rating 4 out of 5]

thought i'd hate it...turns out I loved it...