In The Mirror, A Peacock Danced by Justine Bothwick

 

In The Mirror A Peacock Danced by Justine Bothwick.

Published 24th June 2021 by Agora Books.

From the cover of the book:

Agra, 1938: Eighteen-year-old Florence Hunt has grown up riding horses past the Taj Mahal and chasing peacocks through her backyard under the critical gaze of her father. Increasingly enamoured with his work on the booming railway, Florence yearns to know more, but finds herself brushed away, encouraged only to perform the more ladylike hobbies of singing and entertaining guests. So when a dazzling young engineer walks into her life, she finds herself not only gripped by secret lessons in physics but swept entirely off her feet.

Portsmouth, 1953: Fifteen years later, Florence finds herself pregnant and alone in post-war England – a far cry from her sun-drenched existence in India. Struggling to cope with the bleakness of everyday life in a male-dominated world, Florence is desperate to find the woman she used to be. But when someone from her past reaches out, Florence might just have a chance to start over. 

Soaring from the shimmering heights of the big top to the depths of heartbreak, can Florence find the happiness, independence, and passion she once had in order to start living again?

Set against the lush backdrop of early 20th-century India, In the Mirror, a Peacock Danced – the debut novel from Justine Bothwick – is the moving story of one woman’s journey back to herself.

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Agra, 1938: We meet Florence Hunt on the day of her eighteenth birthday in pre-war India, where she has grown up under the firm hand of her widowed father, who is absorbed with his work on the railway. Her childhood has not been unhappy, but she feels the loss of her mother, left as she has been in the care of a father who not only refuses to consider her wishes, but also demands she confine herself solely to ladylike pursuits, despite her desire to be an engineer. She longs to to be free to govern her own destiny.

The story then moves with a jolt to Portsmouth in 1953, where Florence is now a once-divorced mother of a mixed-race son, living under very different circumstances in the home of her maternal aunt, married to a man who cares little for what she wants out of life, and always struggling with a grey and cold environment very different from that of her childhood. What happened to that spirited young girl of eighteen, who we met at the beginning of the tale?

Justine Bothwick then proceeds to spin out a story that moves back and forth between the dramatic events of pre- and post-war Agra, and the reality of a young mother in Portsmouth of the 1950s, weaving a tale that gradually unfolds the life of a woman who has experienced love, heartbreak and suffering at the hands of a male dominated world - and has lost herself along the way. But when a face from the past turns up on her doorstep, it gives her the chance to regain something of the life she has lost, and an opportunity to chase the dreams she thought would never be fulfilled.

These pages are filled with lush period detail about life in pre-independence India, at a time of considerable political turmoil, and the stark period in post-war England when social change is bubbling under the surface. Bothwick covers considerable ground in the telling of Florence's story against both these richly described backdrops, drawing on themes of women's rights, class and racism, and ties the whole piece together by injecting a storyline that revolves around freedom by exploring life in the circus, and using peacocks as an intriguing motif throughout.

Florence was such an interesting and complex character; her youthful spirit beaten down by life filled with romantic disappointment and frustrated ambition, and even though my heart broke as she fell prey to the dark deeds of others and her own inner frailties, the way she grabbed the chance to follow her dreams after pulling herself from her pit of despair was delightful - especially the way she was inspired by the love and kindness of others who had to fight for the kind of lives they wanted to live.

This is such a moving and heart warming tale about family, inner strength and the role of women, that proved to be a very enjoyable, quirky mix of historical drama and glamorous flight of fancy. I don't think I have ever read anything quite like this before, which makes it something of an impressive debut indeed. I can't wait to see what comes next from Justine Bothwick.

In the Mirror, a Peacock Danced is available to order from your favourite book retailer now in e-book format, and will be available in paperback and audio formats from 22nd July 2021.

Thank you to Peyton Stableford at Agora Books for sending me a proof of this book in return for an honest review, and for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the author:

Justine Bothwick grew up in Kent and Hampshire, studied in London and has also lived in Bristol, Bath and Godalming. In 2005 she moved to Italy. She teaches English in an international school In Rome but returns often to see her family in Winchester (global pandemics allowing).

She is married to a Roman architect, and together they have a flat in the city with a small balcony on which she grows her ever expanding collection of plants and watches the local birdlife.

Justine is a graduate of the Manchester Writing School’s Creative Writing MA programme. She has short stories published in The Lonely Crowd, Fictive Dream, Confingo Magazine, and Virtual Zine, and forthcoming with Nightjar Press. Her work was highly commended in the Bath Short Story Award 2020. Her debut novel – In the Mirror, a Peacock Danced – will be published with Agora Books in June 2021.