B W Clayton
5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 February 2022
I won this book in a Facebook competition and couldn’t wait to start reading it as it sounded right up my street. I knew the book was based on the author’s family history covering the period from 1879 to 1920. However, I wasn’t sure if I would like the way it was presented in the form of the diary of a young Irish girl, Kate McCarthy. I need not have worried for the story soon drew me in and was a real page-turner. I also found the short excerpts from the diaries convenient if I only had time to read a few pages. Kate’s family leaves Ireland for Liverpool looking for a better life, but then she moves on to London and into domestic service. She falls in love with the charming William Duffield and yet she has doubts about his uncertain moods. The story is well written and highlights the extreme poverty and hardships that folk endured at this time. Added to Kate’s diary excerpts are those of her son, Joe, and also letters from her eldest son, Fred, during his time serving as a soldier in World War 1. Again, the accounts are movingly written and create a vivid picture of the past.
Her authentic portrayal of life at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Centuries features real people from her family tree
Ivybridge author Alison Huntingford’s third book in her family historical fiction series - A Ha’penny Will Do – has been published.
Her authentic portrayal of life at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Centuries features real people from her family tree in a fictional story of their lives in Ireland, Liverpool and London at a time of social turmoil, the advent of the Great War and the Great Depression of the 1920s.
There are none of the posh frocks and aristocrats of many novels set in this period - instead we get an insight into the lives of the author’s ancestors and the lives they were living - struggling to get by, hardship and poverty. There is no guarantee of a happy ending in this tale of real life.
Alison explores the seamy and gritty side of life as the Victorian era came to an end and the Edwardian era began.
A Ha’penny Will Do features the three interlocking stories of Kate McCarthy Duffield, Fred Duffield and Joe Duffield through diary entries and letters.
Alison, who lives near Ivybridge, had previously published The Glass Bulldog and short story Someone Else in the same series. She has spent a year writing the 368-page latest novel.
She said: “The people who feature in my novels are real people from my family tree. I have been able to do some research on how they lived and where they lived and I have then taken their lives and created stories so that my own ancestors are the heart of the novel.
“Using real people from my own family as the lead characters in the book has given me a stronger than usual emotional bond to the novel.
“I have researched and imagined the lives that they were living 100-150 years ago but throughout the writing process I have felt very emotionally involved with them as people and as characters in the book.
