Have a look at our resource pages for an overview of publishers & imprints and their websites, the lowdown on our research projects past & present, and useful web links in a number of categories.

Speaking of our research, we recently sent out The Palace of Strange Girls for review. Read on for the results, or click here to download a pdf of the article that appeared in nb45.

The Palace of Strange Girls

by Sallie Day, HarperPress, £14.99

Does the title encompass the story of the book?

That is just one of the questions our nb activists came up with in the recent collaboration between the publishers and our readers. HarperCollins are due to publish the title in hardback but plans are already underway for the paperback edition - and that is where we come in.

Our nb activists were given a preview and asked for their opinions, and also their questions for the readers' guide to accompany the paperback. Here are their thoughts on the book...

It’s the late 1950s and Ruth and Jack Singleton have brought their two girls to Blackpool for the summer holidays. It’s a week fraught with problems and tension for the entire family. Little Beth is recovering from surgery and can’t have any fun whilst wrapped in her mother’s cloying care; older sister Helen wants to dress up and go out with boys but she too is stymied by Ruth’s strict regime. Jack knows his days as foreman of the cotton mill are numbered and, as he contemplates his uncertain future, a piece of news from the distant past reaches him and rocks the foundations of his already troubled marriage. And Ruth, meanwhile, carries on: keeping up appearances, never letting her standards slip, and hoping against hope for bigger, better, more.
Sallie Day’s first novel gives the reader a view of a world on the cusp of irrevocable change. It is a cleverly crafted work, effortlessly moving between grand design and minute detail and using both humour and pathos to stunning effect.
Day’s themes are large but they are rendered tenderly personal through her characters’ careful observations. As society’s attitudes towards sex, race, the role of women and the future of work slowly begin to change, so each of the Singletons makes their painful way towards a new life. An entertaining, intelligent and thought-provoking book.
Barbara Kurkiewicz

Throughout The Palace of Strange Girls we feel that the accepted order is changing – values are challenged; standards are in danger of being lowered. … it is the story of an ordinary family facing unfamiliar emotions and turbulence in their lives. An unsettled, uncommunicative family living in a period of transition while Britain faces inevitable change.
Sandra Ingles

This is an enjoyable novel. It is easy to read with plenty of convincing dialogue and a wide enough range of characters to sustain interest. The historical and political aspects are included subtly enough to enrich rather than to intrude on the main story line. The evocation of period will be nostalgic for some and historic for others, but everyone should find themselves effortlessly transported back almost 50 years. There is plenty here for reading groups, too.
Gillian Farnen
Personal read: 3.5
Reading group read: 4

The main thrust of the book deals with the different ways in which people hurt and use each other, sometimes with the best of intentions, sometimes quite deliberately. All of the characters are wounded in some way and none of them will survive unscathed.
Meg Kingston
Personal read: 3
Reading group read: 4

From the beginning of the book ... you’re drawn in to what becomes quite a complex family through humour and that is an ongoing theme. Where there is dark there will soon be light, which keeps the book from being too oppressive.
Sallie Day’s prose is brilliant. Not too complex so you are weighed down by her knowledge of the English language and not so sparse as to leave you disinterested. The text is witty, punchy and most importantly natural; you never feel any of it is unbelievable.
Simon Salvidge

I’m not a great fan of multiple viewpoint fiction, but in this book it works. It allows the author to show the problems and concerns of each of the family members, and the thoughts of others... The main problem for me was the author’s closeness to the story. This I felt prevented her from distancing herself from some of the characters so she could provide more satisfactory resolutions to their problems. That said, I found the book an easy read.
Monica Mukherji
Personal read: 4
Reading group read: 4

If I had to summarise the book it seemed to be a book of tensions – family, marital, parental, work, racial, friendship, post war, technology. Every sort of relationship tension seemed to be present... I did feel at the end that I wanted a lot of questions answered. However there are lots of strands for discussion in a reading group.
Clare Lavis

The characters are interesting and extremely well drawn. Seven-year-old Beth, fresh out of hospital is like a butterfly cocooned by her mother’s attitude, struggling to be herself, on her own ’I Spy’ Adventure.
Susan Down

This was an easy read, a good holiday read. As a readers group we are often critical about the ending of a book, finding some rushed as if the author has run out of words or time, but this was a tight ending with no real surprises but with some degree of satisfaction achieved for the whole family – but at what a price.
Kathryn Clay
Personal read: 3
Reading group read: 3

I enjoyed this novel tremendously as it brought back so many childhood memories and have already recommended it to friends who grew up in the 1950s and went to Blackpool for their annual holidays.
Carole Fitzgeorge

I think the use of the ‘I-Spy’ twist to this novel is a very interesting concept as the idea of discovery is really strong throughout the whole novel. Nearly everyone has some kind of secret that they don’t want anyone to discover but that ultimately gets harder and harder to conceal... There are loads of subplots and themes which could be looked at from different angles which make a relatively simple narrative into quite a deep and thought-provoking read.
Emma Everington
Personal read: 4
Reading group read: 4

And here, to further help set the scene, is a small sample of the questions they came up with . . .

• Are the I Spy extracts at the beginning of each chapter effective as motifs for the Singletons’ dilemmas?
• How relevant is the war to the sequence of events in the novel?
• Do the characters act differently because they are on holiday and free from the normal restraints?
• How does family life in the 1950s, as we see it in Day’s novel, compare to now?

The Palace of Strange Girls by Sallie Day is published in hardback by HarperPress, price £14.99, and is available in all good bookshops from May.