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Old Baggage

by Lissa Evans - £8.99  Black Swan Publishing (2018)
paperback    ISBN 13: 9781784161217 | ISBN 10: 1784161217

What do you do next, after you’ve changed the world?
 
It is 1928. Matilda Simpkin, rooting through a cupboard, comes across a small wooden club – an old possession of hers, unseen for more than a decade.
 
Mattie is a woman with a thrilling past and a chafingly uneventful present. During the Women’s Suffrage Campaign she was a militant. Jailed five times, she marched, sang, gave speeches, smashed windows and heckled Winston Churchill, and nothing – nothing – since then has had the same depth, the same excitement.
 
Now in middle age, she is still looking for a fresh mould into which to pour her energies. Giving the wooden club a thoughtful twirl, she is struck by an idea – but what starts as a brilliantly idealistic plan is derailed by a connection with Mattie’s militant past, one which begins to threaten every principle that she stands for.
 
Old Baggage is a funny and bittersweet portrait of a woman who has never, never given up the fight.

(Price & availability last checked: December 2018)