The Daffodil Days

<p>'Deeply researched and utterly convincing' <b>Melissa Harrison, </b><i><b>Guardian</b></i><br><br>'Not a word is out of place. Full of understated lyricism ... an exquisite and spellbinding debut' <b>Heather Clark, author of <i>Red Comet </i></b><br><br>'Luminous ... Helen Bain's prose is exact and alive, and the novel builds with a quietly devastating inexorable force you can't look away from' <b>Paula McLain, author of </b><i><b>The Paris Wife</b></i><br><br><b>In the early 1960s, in a small town near Dartmoor, the church bells ring.</b> <b>The people of North Tawton go about their days, catching glimpses of one another’s lives.</b><br><br>There’s the local GP, who knows more about his patients than he would sometimes prefer. There’s the young shop assistant at Kestrels, who understands that the ladies who come there for a new outfit sometimes hope to find a new self. There’s the tenant farm labourer who rings the tower bells at the church three times a week, the notes – harmonious and clashing – rippling out across the rooftops of the town.<br><br>Amid all these lives, a young couple move into focus. New to the town with their small daughter, they have escaped London for a quieter existence in the thatched house beside the church, Court Green. The life they intend to build here – out of fresh lino tiles, second-hand furniture painted with hearts and flowers, and expertly-cooked suppers for weekend guests – will be a good and happy one.<br><br><i>The Daffodil Days</i> depicts a pivotal year in the marriage of 20th-century literature’s most infamous couple, witnessed by the people they lived among. It is a kaleidoscopic portrait of this enigmatic pair, refracted through the rich inner lives of a rural community caught – if only for a moment – in their light.</p>