One of the Scottish Book Trust’s new writers of 2014, and a finalist for the Costa Short Story Prize, Lucy Ribchester also writes about dance and the circus. Her debut novel, The Hourglass Factory, takes us to London in 1912, straight into a world populated by suffragettes and circus performers, journalists and cut-throats. Energetic and entertaining, it moves from the newsrooms of Fleet Street to the worlds of corset fetishists and circus freaks – and what’s at stake is nothing less than life or death.
Come and meet the Edinburgh native and find out about her “strange and waggly career path”, her love affair with history, and the myriad influences that helped to shape this impressive debut, including the story of suffragette Isabel Kelley, who broke into Dundee’s Kinnaird Hall via a skylight during a political rally from which women were banned!
What the critics are saying:
“Exuberant, evocative and filled with an infectious energy. . . hard to resist.” – Beatrice Colin, author of The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite
“A ripping yarn. . . Through her meticulous research and abundant imagination, [Ribchester] paints a complex picture of the fight for women’s suffrage. [It’s] that rare thing – an entertaining novel that you come out of feeling smarter than you were when you went in.” – Quadrapheme UK Literature Review
“A sexy, fast paced historical murder mystery.” – Lesley McDowell, Herald
“There hasn’t been such a pure enjoyable take on the women’s rights movement since Glynis Johns sang Sister Suffragette in Mary Poppins. [A] corking debut.” – Sunday Express
