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Every kid wants to laugh, but Max is the boy who can make it happen.
As he & his classmates head off on a camping
Muriel Newmarch was born in North London in 1903. She died in 2009, aged 106. Judith Bruce is her daughter, & Funny How Things Turn Out
- part biography, part memoir
- tells the story of both women, which in turn traces the unprecedented changes to female lives during the 20th Century. The first half of the book chronicles Muriel's world through the Zeppelin raids of WW1, a painfully stilted class system, & marriage & motherhood in the 1930s
- then her daughter, Judith, picks up the first-person narrative as a mischievous child in the 1940s & we stay with her until the end of the book. Woven artfully through the episodic chapters are the loves, aspirations & disappointments of two 'ordinary' women. Written with an understated elegance, Judith Bruce brings to life a barely remembered England of satin dresses at Swan & Edgar's, liberty bodices at grammar school, & English summer days where silent fathers mowed the lawn in polished shoes & unsuitable boyfriends smoked Player's Navy Cut. As we move through the post-war years from austerity & to prosperity, & Judith's working life at the BBC, the voice could almost be that of Alan Bennett. Even more so when charting the poignancy of Muriel's fading days, failing body & disappearing memory. A remarkable & accomplished portrait of life, love & changing fortunes.