Ivana A. | Diary of Difference (1171 KP) rated A Single Thread in Books
Feb 3, 2020
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<i>When the team from LoveReading UK contacted me regarding A Single Thread, all I knew was that I loved Girl With A Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier and would therefore read any other book she writes.</i>
A Single Thread follows the life of Violet, during the year 1932, a few years after the First World War. Violet has lost her brother and fiance in the war and is still learning to cope. She is labelled as a ”surplus woman” by the society, a woman that in unlikely to marry.
With the grief, the society label and the suffocation of her mother, Violet starts a journey that will change her life.
She is determined to find where she belongs and who she truly is, in a time where being a woman and succeeding on your own was not praised by others.
Her journey starts with a long walk in a few towns, something she used to do with her late father and brother, and it continues with her learning canvas embroidery (today knows as needlepoint), and the beautiful art of bell ringing (which pleasantly reminded me of The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo, a book I read in high school and one I should re-read).
With Tracy’s writing, it is always so easy to lose yourself in the book and teleport to the past and re-live every scene as if you’re there. It is such a pleasurable experience.
I loved Violet, and I loved how she coped with all challenges of that era. Post First World War times were extremely hard, with too many men dying and too many women not being able to ever marry. Violet’s courage and hope kept moving her forward!
<b><i>This novel yells courage. It yells freedom. It yells independence. And standing along Violet, while she finds courage when you least expect to was a moment I will cherish.</i></b>
I recommend it to you, if you love novels in the war time period, or novels that talk about courage!
Thank you to the team at LoveReading UK, for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
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Approximately 10 years (edit: 8, to be precise) since the publication of the previous full-length entry in this series (The Aeronaut's Windlass).
So it's just as well I went back and read that recently, as well as the recently-published 'interquel' short story of Warriorborn.
I *would* advise reading that short story first, since this picks up almost immediately from the end of said story: Benedict jumps at the end of the latter, AMS Predator catches him at the start of this.
That sentence will make more sense to any who have read it.
Anyway, what we have is another full-blown Steampunk novel, with war brewing between the home Spires/nations of the world in which it is set, and with some heavy hints towards the end that it is set in 'our' world, but in the far far (and largely dystopian) future - I also got a bit of a vibe of that bit in 2005's 'King Kong' film where they are on Skull Island and surrounded by giant man-eating millipedes etc (which is why, in the story, the surface world is so feared).
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