Product Description

Emma Brown is a happy-go-lucky child, content to work hard at school, and to play hopscotch with her friends on the pavement outside her house in the run-down Nechells area of Birmingham. As long as everything is alright at home with her Ma and Pa, her little sister Joyce and brother Sid, then life is good. But after Em’s mother Cynthia has her baby she just doesn’t seem to be able to cope. Her life-long friend and neighbour Dot helps as much as she can, but she has children of her own, and no man to hand; Cynthia’s husband Bob, too, does his best, but begins to feel that he’s losing the wife he has loved so much; and little Em just can’t find enough hours in the day to do all the washing and cleaning. Soon, it seems, the only thing is for Cynthia to go and stay across the city with her tyrannical older sister.

With Cynthia away, life only gets harder for Em. Her best friend Kate ostracizes her, leaving only poor, stinky Molly Fox at her side, and when the Board Man comes to call, wanting to know why she’s not at school, things are really bad. When Bob stays out later and later in the evenings, always the worse for wear, and spending too much time with a local very merry widow, Em decides to travel across Birmingham to fetch her mother home, but the mother she discovers is a far cry from the proud, upright and loving figure she has known so well . . .

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14416 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

From the Author
'A Hopscotch Summer' is the first story in what will be a trilogy. The story concentrates on Emma Brown and her family, and what happens to them while Em is quite young. It is also, overall, however the story of three school friends in Birmingham in the 1930s and how their lives entwine and develop.If I had decided to cram all their stories into one book it would have taken very well developed muscles to hold it up to be read! So I am writing three instead. In the next book, 'Soldier Girl,' to be published next year, we follow further the story of Molly Fox, who you will met in this book, though we do not lose sight of Em and her family, or Katie O'Neill, whose story will be told in the third book. So if you don't find out everything you'd like to know about them in this story, there is plenty more to come. Happy reading.

About the Author

Annie Murray was born in Berkshire and read English at St John's College, Oxford. Her first 'Birmingham' novel, Birmingham Rose, hit The Times bestseller list when it was published in 1995. She has subsequently written eleven other successful novels, including, most recently, The Bells of Bournville Green, sequel to the bestselling Chocolate Girls. Annie has four children and lives in Reading.

Customer Reviews

Excellent read
As usual as soon as I recieved Annie Murray's new book, I had got to read it straight away although I had purchased it to take on holiday. I just couldn't wait till then to read it. The book is about the life of a young child Emma who has to grow up far too quickly to look after her siblings and a father who doesn't seem to care as he is so wrapped up in his own misery due to his wife ending up in an Asylum. All the way through the book I kept hopeing that someone would come to her aid and take over. For me this novel I felt was quiet dark and this was due to the fact the Ms Murray really draws you into the life of her characters and that they become so real to you. I wanted this child's life to take a turn to make her life more bearable sooner rather than later.

June
enjoyed but did lack the oomph her other books had felt as if left in mid air will there be a follow on

A Hopscotch Summer
Having read all of Annie Murray's previous books I was really looking forward to reading this, but was left feeling disappointed. I felt that the characters were not fully rounded and it left me looking for more. There were storylines which to my mind were never finished.