Written by Sarah ButlerI loved it! ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
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Firstly, I'd like to thank Anne Cater for the invitation to join the blog tour for Jack and Bet, and Author Sarah Butler, Picador and Netgalley for a free digital copy to review.
The tour runs until 13th March, so why not join us and drop in on some of these bloggers?
The tour runs until 13th March, so why not join us and drop in on some of these bloggers?
The blurb:
Even the longest marriages have their secrets . . . Jack Chalmers is a man of few words, married to a woman of many. He and Bet have been together for seventy years - almost a lifetime - and happily so, for the most part.All Jack and Bet want is to enjoy the time they have left together, in the flat they have tried to make their home. Their son Tommy has other ideas: he wants them to live somewhere with round-the-clock care, hot meals, activities. Bet thinks they can manage just fine.
When they strike up an unlikely friendship with Marinela, a young Romanian woman, Bet thinks she has found the perfect solution - one that could change Marinela's life as well as theirs. But this means revisiting an old love affair, and confronting a long-buried secret she has kept hidden from everyone, even Jack, for many years.
Tender, moving and beautifully told, Sarah Butler's Jack & Bet is an unforgettable novel about love and loss, the joys and regrets of a long marriage, and the struggle to find a place to call home.
Literary Fiction
Romance
My thoughts:
This is the first time I've read anything by Sarah Butler, and I was drawn to Jack and Bet by the blurb - although I had not expected it to be such a beautiful and emotional story.Jack and Bet are both approaching ninety. After almost seventy years of marriage, they have only one son. There are no grandchildren. Their son, Tommy, is now in his sixties and has two divorces behind him as well as other failed relationships. Tommy is concerned for his parents and would like Jack and Bet to be safe and looked after. He is urging them to go into a residential care facility. Bet is not at all keen on this idea.
Jack and Bet live in a small flat in London. They used to live in a flat on an estate nearby, but it is being pulled down, and the area redeveloped. Bet doesn't go out much these days. Her mobility is not what it was, and she doesn't see as well as she used to, but won't admit it. Jack goes out every day. He walks past the demolition site and notes all the changes around him.
It is Jack's habit to have a coffee in a cafe before heading home to tell Bet what he has seen, but on this occasion the cafe is full and there is nowhere for him to sit. A young woman calls him over to share her table, and he reluctantly sits down. She initiates a conversation. She is Marinela, a Romanian student, living in student digs and studying photography. She left Romania to study photography in London after she discovered her married boyfriend was cheating on her. Jack warms to her and invites her take photos at his and Bet's seventieth wedding anniversary party. Marinela is delighted to do so, and here she meets Bet.
The story is told in the third person, from the perspectives of Jack, Bet and Marinela. Jack and Bet reflect on their distant past, wondering whether things could have been different. Marinela is thinking about today with an eye on her future. She is paying her own way through college. Her family are in Romania and would not approve of how she is earning her living. Bet, however, marvels at her courage. In Bet's day, she had been a hostess in a night club but had wanted to be a dancer. She just wasn't quite brave enough to try it.
As Bet gets to know Marinela, Bet sees a lot of herself in the young woman. Bet eventually comes up with a solution to their care and Marinela's housing needs. The arrangement works out well until Tommy finds out about it. All the while, Jack and Bet are getting older, frailer...
It was easy to became emotionally involved with the three main characters, especially Jack. Oh Jack! I have to admit that, at one point, tears were shed. I found Jack and Bet to be an engaging and moving read which tugged on my heart-strings. It describes areas of London I used to be familiar with in the 1970s, which made it all the more authentic for me.
| Author Bio – Sarah Butler |
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 Sarah Butler is the acclaimed author of two previous novels, Ten Things I've Learnt About Love and Before the Fire. Her writing has been translated into fourteen languages. She is also the author of a novella, Not Home, written in conversation with people living in unsupported temporary accommodation. Sarah is a part-time lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University and lives in Manchester with her family. |
| Social Media Links – | |
| X | @SarahButler100 |
Thanks so much for the blog tour support Deborah xx
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