Book description
Emma Brown is a happy-go-lucky child, content to work hard at school,
and to play hopscotch with her friends on the pavement outside her house
in the run-down Nechells area of Birmingham. As long as everything is
alright at home with her Ma and Pa, her little sister Joyce and brother
Sid, then life is good. But after Em’s mother Cynthia has her baby she
just doesn’t seem to be able to cope. Her life-long friend and neighbour
Dot helps as much as she can, but she has children of her own, and no
man to hand; Cynthia’s husband Bob, too, does his best, but begins to
feel that he’s losing the wife he has loved so much; and little Em just
can’t find enough hours in the day to do all the washing and cleaning.
Soon, it seems, the only thing is for Cynthia to go and stay across the
city with her tyrannical older sister.
With Cynthia away, life only gets harder for Em. Her best friend Kate
ostracizes her, leaving only poor, stinky Molly Fox at her side, and
when the Board Man comes to call, wanting to know why she’s not at
school, things are really bad. When Bob stays out later and later in the
evenings, always the worse for wear, and spending too much time with a
local very merry widow, Em decides to travel across Birmingham to fetch
her mother home, but the mother she discovers is a far cry from the
proud, upright and loving figure she has known so well . . . Annie
Murray was born in Berkshire and read English at St John's College,
Oxford. Her first 'Birmingham' novel, Birmingham Rose, hit The Times
bestseller list when it was published in 1995. She has subsequently
written eleven other successful novels, including, most recently, The
Bells of Bournville Green, sequel to the bestselling Chocolate Girls.
Annie has four children and lives in Reading.
