REVIEW: Yours from the Tower by Sally Nicholls
Bridgerton fans rejoice! This epistolary confection—told in letters among three school friends—is perfect for devotees of gossipy costume drama.
Tirzah, Sophia, and Polly are best friends who’ve left boarding school and gone back to very different lives. The year is 1896, and Polly is teaching in an orphanage, Sophia is scouting for a rich husband at the London Season, and Tirzah is stuck acting as an unpaid companion to her grandmother. In a series of letters buzzing with atmosphere and drama, the friends air their dreams, hopes, frustrations, and romances. Can this trio of very different young women—one industrious, one artful, and one in exile—find happiness and love near the dawn of the Edwardian era? From the award-winning author of the Carnegie Medal–nominated historical romance The Silent Stars Go By comes a playful, feel-good story of friendship and aspiration pitched just right for fans of Jane Austen and her contemporary disciples.
Dear Ms. Nicholls,
Some friends of mine had already read the print edition of this book (all that was available in the US at the time) and raved about it. But I’ve gotten used to the ease and convenience of ebooks so I held off until I saw that a digital edition was going to be released here. Hooray!
Best friends for years, three young women (17-18 years old over the course of the book) have now left their boarding school. Polly is back home in Liverpool and teaching at an orphanage, Sophia is taking part in a London Season but as a poor relation, and Tirzah is stuck as a companion to her tyrannical grandmother in a remote country house (which she refers to by various colorful descriptions) in Scotland. As the next year unfolds, the three will correspond with each other (and a few other people who become important to them over the course of the book) taking the reader along for the ride with them.
My initial thoughts were that I liked Polly and Sophia but that Tirzah was a piece of work. For anyone who starts the novel feeling the same way, I will be a bit spoilerish and say that Tirzah matures while still remaining the type who leaps before she looks and plans for almost nothing. But, as is made plain, Tirzah is also the type who wants to be Out, and About, and Doing Things rather than stuck by herself with a grandmother and the Cook near a back-of-beyond tiny Scottish village. Tirzah does and will have her trials some of which I quickly came to see were justified. There are issues in Tirzah’s past complete with things which she has not been told.
Sophia, along with four younger sisters, is the product of her parents’ marriage for love. Her father is a painter – and a good one – but not one who sells a lot of his work. Sophia’s aunt, who Married Well but Not Happily, offers Sophia a Season along with her own daughters one of whom is on Season No 2 and getting tetchy. The other of Sophia’s cousins is frankly a cat. Sophia knows the weight that is on her to marry for money in order to continue providing schooling and later Seasons for her sisters. She has attracted a few suitors but none who makes her as happy as the poor feckless son of the youngest brother of an Earl.
Polly has, to me, the happiest family of the three with loving and attentive parents, rambunctious but sweet siblings, and a job she enjoys even if it also tugs at her heartstrings. Teaching at an orphanage in Liverpool, Polly has a front row seat to all the desperation that drives families to have to turn their children over to others. The previous Superintendent was an ass but the current one is hardworking and determined to improve the lot of the children when and as he can. Polly has sussed out a mystery behind why three brothers have been left there and is also trying to help with organization to take some of the load off Mr. Thompson.
When All Becomes Clear, I could understand both Tirzah’s frustration and her grandmother’s reasoning. As Sophia wrestles with her marriage options, the choices that young women faced become glaringly clear. The plight of the three abandoned brothers highlights the grim reality of poor parents and children who no longer have families that can or will look after them.
The book definitely has a bit of a YA feel to it but this is tempered with heroines who are considered adults (at that time) and are facing adult choices. They have some education but not enough to get jobs that would pay well enough to support them. Sophie especially laments this and vows to do better for her daughters as she rails about how feckless men can take degrees but smart women who wish to, can’t. Tirzah begins by joking about what she could/would do to escape her isolation and (as she sees it) drudgery only to realize how much worse she’d be without her safety net. Polly has to face tough moral choices and possible consequences in how she proceeds to dig up information.
But wait, there’s more! The story doesn’t shy away from some other realities of the day. For Sophia, we see the dilemmas that eighteen year old girls faced in choosing their best lifelong marriage paths and that some choices might be made for duty rather than love. Tirzah’s past could have been so much worse and
Spoiler: Show
And yet, the three women, working within what were the mores and options of the day, do find their way. Two end happily engaged – engagements made with eyes wide open – and one is sort of engaged to be engaged. I also liked that two of the friends are going to keep an eye on this one and are aware that the path of this love might not run smoothly. The afterward/note details how much research was done using period information so I finished the book on a happy and optimistic note and am delighted to have read it. B+
~Jayne
‘Life with you is never dull, is it?’ he said.
‘Actually, I’m the most sensible one of my friends,’ I told him. ‘My friend Sophia goes to six parties and five dinners a week. She’s trying to avoid an entanglement with a secretary who has a socialist sister and a monkey, but we don’t think she’s going to manage it. Going to Toxteth to look for an orphan’s stepmother is tame.’
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Thank you for this review – the book sounds really enjoyable and a bit “more” than many historicals. I look forward to reading it.
@LML: In her Afterward note, Nicholls says one of the reasons she wrote the book was to try her hand at an epistolary novel. I think she’s done a beautiful job.
I was one of the people who recommended this to Jayne and I want to second her thoughts and her grade. The book was well-written and on the whole well-researched also. The author has another book, The Silent Stars Go By, which in some ways closer to a romance, and which I also recommend.
I meant to say earlier that Sophia’s storyline was my favorite (though I liked the others too). I thought the guy she ends up with was attractive and adorable, but I also loved how the author exposed the dark side of the marriage mart–the quiet desperation of dreading that you’d have to marry someone you didn’t like, or that you wouldn’t marry at all (dooming you to remain childless and dependent on your family for the remainder of your life). Of course that underpins many a romance but the treatment here deconstructs that trope to an extent. This aspect of the book reminded me a bit of Cecilia Grant’s third book, A Woman Entangled, too.
@Janine: Yes, exactly! What you said about the Marriage Mart is what I was trying to highlight. I’d love to see how Sophia’s cousin ends up doing in Idaho.
@Jayne, 84 Charing Cross Road was the first epistolary novel I read (and loved). I’ve enjoyed this form of story telling ever since.
@LML: I love them too. I can’t recall which was my first but I think you might really like Eva Ibbotson’s book Madensky Square. Not exactly a romance but lovely.
@LML, 84 Charing Cross Road was likely the first epistolary novel I read, too. I also have a continuing fondness for such books.