Yours From the Tower by Sally Nicholl

Title: Yours From the Tower

Author: Sally Nicholl

Genre: Historical Fiction

Publisher: Walker Books

Published: 1^st November 2023

Format: Hardcover

Pages: 368

Price: $29.99

Synopsis: Three very different young women make their way through late Victorian England – can they each find true happiness?

Tirzah, Sophia and Polly are best friends who’ve left boarding school and gone back to very different lives. Polly is teaching in an orphanage. Sophia is looking 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, they share their hopes, their frustrations, their dramas, and their romances. Can these three very different young women find happiness?

~*~

It’s 1897, and Tirzah, Polly, and Sophia have finished boarding school, and are back at home, and their lives couldn’t be more different. Polly is teaching at an orphanage, Sophia is hoping to find a rich husband during the London Season, and Tirzah is back home with her grandmother, unable to go anywhere, feeling as though she is imprisoned and hoping to find out more about life. Separated physically, they pour their hearts out to each other through a series of letters over the course of about six months.

The letters follow the dramas of Tirzah trying to break free from her grandmother, wanting to know more about why her grandmother is the way she is but frustrated that she’s stuck at home, seemingly with no future and nothing to look forward to, and wishing she could have grand adventures like her friends. And Polly, who longs to help the children of the orphanage more than they do – and has a mystery on her hands regarding the family of three young boys who had been placed there by their stepmother. And as Tirzah and Polly grapple with the realities of their lives and what they see, Sophia is enamoured with the Season, the lives of the girls intertwine with others – brothers, employers, lovers, and unexpected suitors. The novel is told in letters, where each character reveals something about themselves with each letter. And the detail is what means as a reader, we get a decent understanding of the plot and characters.

Epistolary novels – novels told in letters – are an interesting way to tell a story. When it is done well, the letters deliver everything that a conventional narrative does, whilst still leaving some things open for readers to imagine what has happened, how it has happened and what happens after the end of the novel. I felt that the Victorian setting was perfect for this, as the letters and telegrams could give all the detail needed and when we needed to know it. It worked well in this instance, because the letters were the main form of communication, and therefore, there was no need to try and work out what someone meant with a cryptic text message, for example. The setting worked well too. Seeing how the friendship played out was great to read, and done well, because we got to see how they understood and trusted each other, and the value of friendship. This made the novel successful to me – because it highlighted the importance of friendship and having people who care about you beyond a romantic relationship, and that’s what made the novel for me. It had space for all sorts of relationships and working towards an understanding that was not there before.

Everything in this novel worked well and I think readers who are looking for a novel that celebrates friendship will enjoy this novel. I think readers are keen for novels that focus on a broader range of relationships than just romantic love – I know they’re the novels that I often prefer because they give space for other aspects of life. This novel goes to show that doing something like this is wanted and needed – and it is a novel that I think will have an audience and be well-received.