Lolly Willowes

I like the novel because it offers insights into the ways people lived in the time between the wars (this appeals to me as an historian). What was expected of women and what could you do about it! The way Lolly's story unfolds is really surprising and a bit uncanny. Only today, I walked through my familiar woods and wondered what it must feel like to sit here for hours in the midst of winter and watch the milky sun through the bare trees until it disappears behind the fields.

I loved this book so much. It was a slow burn, but the blameless characters were so skilfully drawn, just people living their lives as expected, and expecting everyone else to do as they are expected. A suffocating existence from which Laura Willowes suddenly awakens and boldly takes charge of her own life. Not dramatically, but quietly and firmly to the astonishment of her conventional family. And what she discovers about herself and other women that she comes to live amongst is wonderful and certainly spoke to me, as an older woman! I think I am most certainly a witch!