Review: The Ash, The Well and the Bluebell

Sometimes, a book just defies your judgement. If you like historical fiction of the likes of All the Light We Cannot See or memoirs like Angela’s Ashes, you’ll like this book.

Author: Sandra Arnold

Genre: Historical Fiction

Pages: 331

Rating: 5 stars

The Blurb:

Losing her daughter to the Christchurch earthquake sends Lily back to her childhood village in northern England to scatter Charlie’s ashes. It’s a place of ghosts for Lily after the mysterious drowning of a school friend at the old village well – a tragedy somehow linked to the death of a local woman accused of witchcraft three hundred years earlier. Now Lily’s back, she wants to find out what happened at the well and the truth behind the swift departure of her friend Israel.

The Ash, the Well and the Bluebell spans three centuries and three countries, exploring the love and history that makes a community, and the hate and secrets that can destroy it.

The Verdict:

I was a bit hesitant to start this book. I read the blurb and then put the book on my bedside table. I opened the first page and closed it again. Looking back on that, I think I was a little triggered as I knew it was going to be about the Christchurch earthquake. I was in town that day, the 22nd of February 2011, and I didn’t want to travel back to that afternoon of grinding earth and dust, if only in my mind.

But I needn’t have worried. The rich prose is always tastefully done. It’s not about the shock value.

The main character, Lily, remembers her childhood in England. The story draws you in by its innocent questioning of often terrible things; we see the world of Eshwell Bridge in the 1950’s through the eyes of Lily as a child.

We follow the wonderfully-developed cast of characters as we try to discover what really happened when her friends disappeared, many years ago. The story is a tightly-woven mat of threads of stories through time, exposing prejudice and secrets and the gritty realities of the Child Migration Scheme to Australia and New Zealand.

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“Israel didn’t cry when he said goodbye to his brothers and sisters.” But I sure did.

A wealth of detail paints each scene in vivid colour, whether it takes place in England, New Zealand or Israel. It feels like an adventure, in a time where we can’t physically travel overseas.

In spite of my avoidance tactics, I really enjoyed the story once I got into it. It wasn’t about the earthquake. It was about friendship and acceptance, grieving and motherhood. I loved this book and will be thinking about it for a long time to come.

Disclosure: I was provided with a copy of this book in exchange for a review.

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