Double Vision

by Diana Hendry, Michael Dooling (Illustrator)

Fifteen-year-old Eliza, the middle of three daughters, longs to escape from her predictable life in a small English seaside village in the 1950s, but she does not know to what she wishes to escape

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Diana Hendry grew up by the sea and has worked as a journalist, English teacher and tutor in Creative Writing at the University of Bristol. Her poetry has won a number of awards including first prize in the 1996 Housman Society Competition. From 1997-1998 she was Writer in Residence at Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary. She lives in Edinburgh.

She has published more than thirty books for children, including Harvey Angell which won a Whitbread Award in 1991 and You Can't Kiss It Better, set in Edinburgh (2003). She also writes adult short stories, a number of which have been published in anthologies and read on Radio 4. Her collections of poetry for adults, Making Blue (1995) and Borderers (2001) are published by Peterloo, and Twelve Lilts: Psalms & Responses (2003) by Mariscat Press. With Tow Pow, in a series of poetic ‘challenges’ she has published Sparks! (2005, also Mariscat Press). A third full collection, Late love : and other whodunnits, was published in 2008. She has also published a collection of poems for children, No Homework Tomorrow (Glowworm, 2003)

Reviews

[Capn]

Promo blurb at back of The Midwinter Watch:

"People like me would do a lot better if they could see double like me... I mean seeing things two ways - with the head and the heart."
Growing up in a small, North West coastal town in the 1950s, fifteen-year-old Eliza Bishop finds life unbearably claustrophobic. But to her small, fearful sister Lily, the seaside setting affords unlimited scope for her imagination. Through these two very different pairs of eyes a memorable range of characters, events and emotions is brought clearly into vision.

"Succeeds totally where very few books do, as a novel which bestrides the two worlds of adult and children's fiction with total success in both... The stuff of which the very best fiction is wrought." The Sunday Times

[Princess Katie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Honestly, I didn't even finish this one, so my rating doesn't really count for much.

[Stephanie A. · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's nothing really wrong with this nice little story, but I didn't really understand anything that was happening or what the plot was until I was about halfway through. It was hard to even keep the time period straight; I kept thinking it was a decade earlier.