The Silk Factory
Written by Judith Allnatt
Narrated by Antonia Beamish
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
A beautiful and eerie story of love and memory from the author of The Moon Field.
Anyone who’s ever lost someone is haunted
Rosie Milford inherits a house in an old silk factory after her mother’s death and moves there with her young children. The discovery of a shocking truth about her own childhood, when she is already reeling from the breakup of her marriage, fills her with distrust and fearfulness. Then she starts seeing a strange child, wandering in the garden, who seems as lost as she is.
In 1812, silk master Septimus Fowler has grand plans to keep his factory in step with the industrial revolution: he will plant mulberry trees, rear silkworms and import new mechanized looms. Orphan Beulah Fiddement works as a bobbin winder and has secrets that the master would go to any lengths to get. Caught up in a dark adult world of illicit love, rebellion and revenge, Beulah must put away her childhood and draw on all her spirit to protect those she loves.
Beulah’s story of guilt and bravery will echo down two centuries and change Rosie’s life as she struggles to overcome the hand of her own past and find redemption.
Judith Allnatt
Judith Allnatt is an acclaimed short story writer and novelist. Her novels include The Moon Field and The Silk Factory. She lives with her family in Northamptonshire.
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Reviews for The Silk Factory
4 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Another random selection! Judith Allnatt's ghostly novel, intricately researched and beautifully told, is the history of a house in the Northamptonshire village of Weedon Bec and the mothers and daughters, two hundred years apart, whose lives are intertwined with the mulberry trees in the garden. Newly single mum of two Rosie moves into her late mother's house and learns starts to delve into family secrets hidden there. In 1812, a tyrannical silk master ruling a factory with an iron rod sets against two young orphans and their elder sister, pulling the family apart. I got completely caught up in both strands of the story, from the Dickensian drama of Effie, Beulah (fantastic name) and Tobias Fiddement in the early nineteenth century to Rosie Milford and her two children in the present day. Judith Allnatt has a talent for detail and description that not only brings her characters vividly to life, but had me looking up the history of the real Weedon Bec, so taken was I with her evocative setting. Usually with 'time slip' novels, I find myself enjoying one half of the story more than the other, but I was equally rapt with both threads of the narrative.Only one minor niggle - birth certificates for twins give the time of birth as well as the date. That angle of the story was slightly far-fetched, I thought. But otherwise - captivating!