Product Description

A teenage girl comes to Ealing to find her birth mother, a glamorous, bohemian writer who was forced to adopt her illegitimate child. A blackly funny novel with a mystery element about adoption, relationships and identity - with a stunning twist .

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #350735 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-03
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

The Times
Funny, touching and beautifully written

The Glasgow Herald
'The novel contains some fine, playful moment...Yardley's writing shines'

Synopsis
It is 1969. London swings, men land on the moon, and thirteen-year-old Kim Tanner appears on Imogen's doorstep to announce she is her long-lost daughter. Imogen wrote a bestseller about the baby she was forced to give away, so there have been many contenders, but Kim is special, and she is convinced. Kim and her dog Welly move in with the beautiful, bohemian Imogen and proceed to bring order to chaos. Then along comes pretty, appealing Sukie, also claiming to be Imogen's child. Kim is determined to prove she is Imogen's daughter but when she starts digging she unearths a very murky story...

Customer Reviews

Adoption and identity explored with humour and heartache
The book is set at the end of the swinging sixties (the title is taken from an album by Pink Floyd and music runs right through the book). Kim is thirteen, strong-minded and clever, and she is trying to cope with the loss of Peggy who raised her, and who has recently been killed in a street accident. Kim always knew she was adopted and that her history was complicated. She also always believed from Peggy that she was the natural daughter of a famous author, Imogen Sinclair, who wrote a bestselling book about how she was bullied into giving up her baby for adoption. This was in a time when pregnant girls from middle class families were customarily imprisoned in "mother and baby homes" and bullied into handing over their babies to "respectable" married couples. Imogen is now a wealthy, beautiful Bohemian flower child, living in sin in swinging London, with a good-looking layabout. Kim turns up at her door on a morning in spring, and for both Kim and Imogen it is love at first sight. Unfortunately, there are no hard facts to link them as mother and daughter, and since Imogen's book was released there have been hundreds of girls claiming the kinship. Kim (and an enormous dog named Welly) move into Imogen's household and Kim begins to create some order from Imogen's general chaos. Then a new girl appears on the scene. Sukie is pretty and appealing, and Kim feels her security slipping away. She sets out to prove her claim to Imogen, and in the process she finds secrets, lies and a personal link with a murder case that shocked England.

It is really a story about identity, the question "Who am I?" reverberates through the book. The plot is fast moving, the writing is beautiful and all the characters vivid. Kim herself is a mix of stubborn-minded Essex girl and vulnerable motherless child, Imogen is sweet, lovable and exasperating, and Kim's run-ins with Imogen's selfish lover Sebastian are hilarious. The atmosphere of sixties London is perfectly portrayed. It is also a page-turner with twist after twist. When the first plot twist appears you think "Right, so we've now moved into thriller territory". Then it turns again and the truth is far more believable and deeply poignant.

I highly recommend "A Saucerful of Secrets" to all readers for its energy, humour and suspense, and it is a must for any adoptee, who will instantly recognise the insecurities and the complexities of true identity and belonging.

Touching and Twisting
There is plenty of humour and plenty of darkness in this engaging mystery by Jane Yardley, and consequently a great deal of truth. Set against a backdrop of the rigid adoption policies for unmarried mothers of the 1950s and contrasted by the new youth movement of the 60s (it is set in 1969), this touching story will have you shocked and horrified as many times as it has you squealing with laughter. It certainly has a good deal of very inventive twists and turns, and the characters don't just leap off the page, they're with you in the room, and probably in your consciousness forever. This is the 3rd of Jane's novels and I thoroughly recommend all three, but I think this is my favourite.