Pumpkin Coach, The

by Susan Sallis

For Alice Pettiford, living near Gloucester in the late 1940s, leaving school for a job as a railway secretary makes perfect sense. Most of her family have worked for the railway over the years, and her best friend Hester's father would be in the same office. What Alice does not expect is that she would fall in love with Joe Adair, a colleague, almost as soon as she meets him. But Joe has to go overseas on National Service, and in the meanwhile Hester's brother, the enigmatic Valentine, finds that his fondness for Alice is deepening into something much stronger. When he and Alice discover an old railway coach, long abandoned, hidden in a clearing in the Forest of Dean, Alice realises that it has been a very special, magical place. What she doesn't know is that the coach has played a secret part in the history of Joe's family, and that Joe's mother named it 'the pumpkin coach'. Now her own destiny will also be shaped by this enchanted refuge.

The Pumpkin Coach, the new novel by bestselling author Susan Sallis, is full of the passion and drama that have won her a huge and devoted readership.

Genres: Fiction

480 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published May 1, 2004

About the author

Susan Sallis was the author of over twenty bestselling novels, many of them set in the West Country. She was born in Gloucestershire and lived in Somerset with her family. She died in 2020.

Reviews

[The biblio minhocas · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Pumpkin Coach by Susan Sallis is a family saga which is light on the romance. The romance throughout the novel is light but raw.
The characters are so different yet to similar when it comes to the core. One might feel the novel is very slow, so if you're looking for something which will escalate quickly, full of adventures, meeting new people and excitement, this book is not for you. This book is absolutely like life itself, slow, a tad bit of regret and imperfection laden with much love and affection.
When it comes to the women of the novel (there are lots of women in this!) they're strong and beautiful. They're not conventionally strong and one's feminist self might feel they're weak but one must keep in mind the time frame of the novel. It was just after second world war and we've come a long way from that.
The women of this novel are very well read and know how to live and love on their own terms. The women of the book, well, very frequently pull references of different characters of other novels like Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte or they would keep reading Virginia Woolf, which was of utmost fascination to me.
And there's another thing which was enticing- the enchanted Pumpkin coach. Yes, the book has magic and once again not your conventional wand flicking, spell speaking magic. But magic in general, just the way life is, full of magic. We do not often notice the magic in life but the book will clearly make it very clear that life can be magical in the most peculiar and unconventional ways. The Pumpkin Coach ties almost all the characters of the book in the same string. The Pumpkin Coach has a history, a history that'll shape the future of a girl named Alice and everyone around her. But what she didn't know was all of them already had a history with The Pumpkin Coach.
This book is recommended to anyone looking for a light read and ready to accept a slow paced plot. This look will take you through various emotions- love, friendship, regret, anger, sorrow and leave you with an emotion lingering in your very own heart which will be very difficult to name.

[Tamie Z · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not technically done with this book and I’m just annoyed by it. The synopsis on the back of the book is NOT AT ALL what actually happens in the book.
Alice and Val do NOT discover the “pumpkin coach” together like it says. He discovered it YEARS before he actually takes Alice to SEE it. On page 344!!!! The books title really hasn’t anything to do with the actual plot of the book. Pretty disappointed with this book. And whoever wrote the synopsis. They obviously had no idea what the book was actually about. And prior to page 344, the pumpkin coach was only mentioned 2 or 3 times. This book needs a completely different name and the Pumpkin Coach does not play a big enough role in the book to be named after it. I might have enjoyed it more but I went in thinking the book was one thing and it wasn’t. And it took me forever to get into it just waiting for it to get better. The best part of the book was the last 20-30 pages or so. Of an almost 500 page book.

[Shelley Hardy · Rating 3 out of 5]

EBOOK
The Pumpkin Coach
I had a lot of mixed feelings at the start of this book. It took me a bit to get all the characters straight and who belonged to which family, My biggest complaint early in the book was that the author just seemed to be logging the story like she was giving a detailed statement of the facts. I felt that there wasn’t enough character development. But for some reason I had the need to keep reading. I enjoyed the story more as it continued on and by the end of the book most of the characters had developed and no longer lacked depth. The author Susan Sallis was not a flowery writer and still managed to sculpt out interesting characters that really reflected the time period the story took place in. Families and friendships are complicated things. I will be reading the sequel to this book.
I would rate it a strong 3.5 stars.

[Krisz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book years ago but still remember it as being light and well-written.

[Amanda Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I loved the characters and am looking forward to reading the sequel to see what happens next in their lives.

[Alison · Rating 3 out of 5]

This tale had a twist which I didn't see coming. The significance of the eponymous pumpkin coach wasn't really clear until the last quarter of the story

[V H · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another book I only picked up because it was a book in English in the hostel book bin and didn’t think I would enjoy, but then did. It took me a few pages to get into the way Sallis writes, but when I did I could hardly put the book down!

The book just follows the lives of two families, how they interact and intertwine, and it was really interesting to see how they changed during the course of a few years. Alice is the main person, I’m not sure if I liked her; she wasn’t quite believable enough, which was strange as most of the other characters were. The story didn’t just focus on her though but on all the other characters of the families as well which was good as you get to know what happens from more than just one perspective.

There were quite a few surprises in the book, which was nice because I never knew what was going to happen next. The biggest one, I think, was what happened with Valentine. I don’t want to go into too much detail but I just want to say I didn’t think he would end up the way he did.

My favourite character was Reggie. This sounds strange if you’ve read the book. I didn’t like his personality but that was also why I liked him, because you always found out new things about him and he was just quite well written.

[Cait · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the sort of book I would normally pick to read myself.

Wasn't particularly heavy on the romance, liked how it just sort of drifted along through time.

Didn't feel like the Pumpkin Coach was really that big a part of the story and wasn't bothered with hearing about Joe and Louise.

Everyone got pregnant really easily, though I guessed Alice would lose the baby.

[Tania · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wasn't in the mood to enjoy this one.