A while ago, I wrote a blog about the importance of life-affirming stories. That was before the pandemic and I imagine that this quality in a novel is even more important these days. In that blog, I described the life-affirming story as “the sort of book that touches on the strength of the human heart, and encompasses the resilience of the individual and a basic belief in goodness and hope.”
One of the novels I used to illustrate my point was Christmas at the Foyles Bookshop by Elaine Roberts. This is how I described it: “an emotional story, filled with love and loss, friendship and family, mystery and duty, heartache and hope... It gradually builds up to a gloriously satisfying ending brimming with that special life-affirming quality that, put simply, makes the reader feel good about the world." |  |
After the success of her Foyles trilogy, Elaine is now writing a new saga series, of which the first is The West End Girls. The series will follow the fortunes of Annie, Rose and Joyce. This first story opens with Annie, who has yearned to leave her home in the country, deciding in a now-or-never moment that the time has come to set off for the bright lights of London in the hope of stardom. But this is 1914 and life is about to change for everybody.
In this tale of love, ambition, heartache and the importance of following your dreams, Elaine Roberts has written another of her trademark heart-warming and engrossing sagas. The friendship of the three main characters shines through as they support each other, come what may, and this forms the cornerstone of the book and very probably of the whole series. Elaine has written another book with that very special quality – that of being life-affirming.
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Link to Elaine’s author page on Amazon
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