A memoir from New York Times bestselling author
Jacqueline Winspear
After fifteen novels in her beloved Maisie Dobbs series, Jacqueline Winspear has taken the bold step of turning to memoir, revealing the hardships and joys of her family history. Both shockingly frank and deftly restrained, her memoir tackles such difficult, poignant, and fascinating family memories as her paternal grandfather's shellshock, her mother's evacuation from London during the Blitz; her soft-spoken animal-loving father's torturous assignment to an explosives team during WWII; her parents’ years living with Romani Gypsies; and Jacqueline’s own childhood working on farms in rural Kent, capturing her ties to the land and her dream of being a writer at its very inception.
An eye-opening and heartfelt portrayal of a post-War England we rarely see, This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing is the story of a childhood in the English countryside, of working class indomitability and family secrets, of artistic inspiration and the price of memory.
This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing
Jacqueline Winspear | 9781641290418 | Memoir |
Soho Press | Available in hardcover, ebook, audiobook
NOW AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK
Now available from:
A 2021 Edgar Award Nominee for Best Critical/Biographical
Fall 2021 ABA Indie Next Reading Group Selection
An IndieNext Selection
A LibraryReads Selection
Also available in audiobook:
Canada
United Kingdom
“The author of the Maisie Dobbs series of cozy British mysteries picked hops as a young girl to help support her family, which struggled to subsist in the hardscrabble landscape of rural Kent. This childhood memoir, though frank in its details of postwar privation, is at heart a love story—her parents’ love for each other, and hers for them and the meaningful life they gave her.”
–The Wall Street Journal
“You don’t have to be a boomer or have had a mirror experience to get pulled into the world Winspear re-creates. It’s a world both nostalgic and soberly realistic, full of crystalline descriptions of the Kentish countryside and the now long-gone hop gardens that once flourished there.”
–The Washington Post
“Heartfelt and astonishing . . . A love letter and a
beautiful work of gratitude toward the people and the
place that made the author what and who she is.”
–Elizabeth George, New York Times bestselling author of the
Inspector Lynley novels
“Jacqueline Winspear has created a memoir of
her English childhood that is every bit as engaging as
her Maisie Dobbs novels, just as rich in character
and detail, history and humanity.”
–Anne Lamott, New York Times bestselling author of Almost Everything: Notes on Hope
“Jacqueline Winspear's memoir of an
English country childhood is also an homage to the remarkable parents whose choices and outlooks shaped
her. Their stories of hardship and gratitude became hers,
and hers became this unforgettable book.”
–Hope Edelman, New York Times bestselling author of Motherless Daughters and The Aftergrief
“Without a trace of self-pity,
Jacqueline Winspear portrays a childhood of rural
poverty overcome by hard manual labor, lifelong love amid emotional wounds, and a profound understanding of how 'the gift of place' creates meaning.”
–Sally Bedell Smith, New York Times bestselling author
Jacqueline Winspear was born and raised in the county of Kent, England, and now lives in California. After graduating from the University of London’s Institute of Education, she worked in academic publishing, in higher education and in marketing communications in the UK. She emigrated to the United States in 1990, and while working in business began to publish articles and essays for a range of publications, and also became the US correspondent for two UK-based journals covering international education. Her essays focusing on women’s history been published in The Washington Post, Huffington Post, Lithub and publications on both sides of the Atlantic. In 2003 Jacqueline published her first novel in the New York Times bestselling Maisie Dobbs series, which has been translated into over twenty languages. Maisie Dobbs was a New York Times Notable Book;
won an Agatha, a Macavity, and an Alex Award; and was nominated for four other awards including the Edgar Award for Best Novel. In addition to fifteen Maisie Dobbs novels, Winspear has published a standalone novel set in the Great War, The Care and Management of Lies, which was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. She has also published What Would Maisie Do? a non-fiction book based upon the series. The Consequences of Fear, her next novel in the Maisie Dobbs series will be published in March 2021.
“The best-selling author of the Maisie Dobbs mystery series pulls back the curtain on her hardscrabble postwar childhood in rural Kent, England, in which bitter poverty was offset by good cheer and family love.”
–The New York Times