Jacqueline Winspear gifts the reader with a memoir of her childhood in Kent, and how her perceptions of how WWII and the post-war world shaped her immediate and extended family. The tales she's told are just that--some are true, some are embroidered, and some are created out of whole cloth. The embroidered memories are a way for family members to soften harsh memories and the creations as a way to explain what is too painful to be told as truth. Overall, the tales and memories create a happy history for the child, and for those who follow the Maisie Dobbs series, create the origins for the people and places in Winspear's works.

I love her Maisie Dobbs series but struggled with this memoir. It did not seem like it had been edited at all. I just kept having to set it down.

I have not read other books by this author, so I didn’t come to her memoir with any knowledge of her or her writing. I am clearly not the reader she was writing for. I found the writing flat with lots of telling. I started reading this book on two occasions, thinking a second run at the memoir would make a difference, but I could not get interested in it. I know the author and publisher put much into the book, but it didn’t resonate with me.

I am not familiar with the author's fiction works, but memoirs sometimes get my attention. Considering 2020's isolation for us all, the title itself was enough to draw me me (2021 ans I'm still waiting to laugh...). The book was a bit uneven, Mundane mixed with interesting, unevenly paced,... but a pleasant enough read. It was one I could pick up, read, put down and get back to later, which really wasn't a bad way to read it. It was an interesting life story.

Thoroughly enjoyed this beautifully written memoir by the Maisie Dobbs series author Jacqueline Winspear. Delightful in her retelling of stories of her childhood in Kent with her animated parents and a Denis the Menace like brother.

Thank you to NetGalley, Soho Press, and Jacqueline Winspear for this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Not the greatest. Little dull. And I felt like I never got to know the main character. I'll stick to Maisie Dobbs, thanks

“Yes,” I thought when I first spotted this title, “yes, if there’s anyone who’s lived an interesting enough life to write a memoir about, it would be the person who invented Maisie Dobbs,” and I was right.

But this isn’t just a memoir about a person, or even a family; it’s a meditation on place and memory, myths both personal and cultural. As much about an unusual, almost anachronistic upbringing, as much about a magically surreal worldview, this is a lovely memory palace of a book, as delicate as a house of cards.

Sure to delight fans of memoirs and biographies as well as WWII buffs, the slow pacing and nonlinear construction may be frustrating for readers who prefer a more straightforward, unambiguous narrative.

Well written but sort of slow-moving. I lost interest and had to plod through. I eventually did not finish.

As a fan of the Maisie Dobbs series, it was interesting to read this memoir and learn the background for some of the places and events in the stories.

The title, now a phrase I repeated often in 2020, caused me to ponder life as the author slowly unveiled hers. I want to read it again and again.

I love Jacqueline Winspear's series of Maisie Dobbs and I didn't realize how much of the fiction series reflected her family's story. I always recommend this series to people who read history because it was so factual and such a wonderful look at England during and after WWI. It takes a special writer to reveal so many family secrets and memories. I received a copy of this ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. I'm not a big biography reader but I'm glad I selected this one.

Thanks to NetGalley and Soho Press for making an advance copy available for an honest review.

I should probably state right off, that I'm not a big reader of biographies or memoirs. They don't usually have the strong dramatic structure that I crave. Winspear's history certainly fits that criticism. It meanders.

That being said, I have often wondered if great fiction writers develop characters and stories from a well of boredom, a smooth life without complications which forces an active mind to create to keep it from withering, or if the tales spring from a life crammed with color and conflict. In Winspear's case it is decidedly the latter. With her parents and grandparents haunted by world wars, an unsettled life of poverty, a love of nature, family strife, the threads were there just waiting to be woven together into wonderful tales.

A delightful well written memoir. Winspear’s conversational writing style comes across in this historical account of her life and her family’s history.

I have to admit something: I’ve not yet read any of Jacqueline Winspear’s fiction—gasp!—but I do intend to at some point, as many of my library customers enjoy her historical mysteries and request read-alikes. I may nudge her fiction higher up my to-read list, actually, as I found myself rather enjoying her word choices here—descriptions such as “I was effervescent with excitement” stood out in particular.

Winspear spends an inordinate amount of this memoire sharing stories from the lives of her parents rather than just of her own life. This may seem odd—it is a memoire after all—but it’s apparent that her life is at least as influenced by her parents and their life stories as it is by her independent experiences.

Building her parents’ stories into her own is also an interesting way of providing the context for how they came to be who they were in relationship with the author. The parts of the text that explore more closely the difficult dynamics of Winspear's relationship with her mother, for example, are felt all the more viscerally once we’ve had a chance to build empathy for both parties through these stories.

I found her style of weaving forward and backward through time to be somewhat disorienting, however, and at times I lost track of whether she was describing her own or her mother’s experiences, and I occasionally also lost track of which war she was describing during a particular story. But I did love listening to the family stories, and I even appreciated the subtly amusing end-of-life stories with her parents.

I also must admit that I had not realized quite how ignorant I was of Britain’s wartime experience—such as how they evacuated thousands of children away to foster families in areas less likely to be bombed—until now. I also did not know the term “surplus women” existed to describe the population’s gender imbalance after the country lost hundreds of thousands of young men in WWI. I was not expecting to receive a history lesson, but a history lesson Winspear does deliver.

Jaqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series is my favorite historical mystery series and her new memoir does not disappoint,. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good memoir., even if they are not familiar with her books. Winspear's memoir really gave me insight into her personal life through her family memories and I can really feel some of her real-life experiences sprinkled throughout her books. A lovely read.

I've never read any of Jacqueline Winspear's fiction, but something about the pitch of her memoir This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing during BookExpo really intrigued me. What a story! And it's not only the story of Jacqueline's girlhood years, but also the story of her parents. I loved that she started with her parents because I think that so much of what Jacqueline experienced growing up was a direct result of the experiences her parents had when they were children and young adults. And how wonderful that Jacqueline knows her parents' stories because so many of us don't often get that chance.

I often wonder when I read memoirs like this one if I would have anything as interesting to write about should I ever write a memoir. Jacqueline lived such an interesting life, one that is different to me not only because her formative years took place during the 50s, 60s, and 70s, but also because she grew up in a different country. And it's so interesting how different things were for those living in England as compared to what I know of my parents growing up in the U.S.

I think this book would be a great book club read, maybe if you did some sort of double feature: one month read one of Winspear's novels and the next month read her memoir.

This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing is published by Soho Press and is on bookstore shelves today.

This book is a fascinating reflection from the author Jacqueline Winspear about her family and their influence on her.

My mother read it and said that it really helped her understand more about her own large family and growing up poor in rural Canada. She felt that her experiences and struggles were not isolated and she was comforted to learn other families were quite similar to hers. If you are in your 70s or 80s you might relate quite a bit to this book, if your parents are of this generation you will learn quite a bit. Anything that helps us all understand each other better is definitely worth the read.

Jacqueline is an excellent author and this is a book definitely worth reading.

Five stars. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

If you are a Maisie Dobbs fan, you will enjoy Winspear’s memoir focusing on the years in Britain after World War II and the life of her parents. Stories of London during the Blitz, her mother as a child being sent to Kent for safety during the war, only it was not safe. Until I read this book, I was unaware of the abuse of the children who had to leave London. The stories of her childhood, living in a caravan with Gypsies, and living in a rural setting. If nothing else, I need to find some hops to smell them since they are a trigger for memories in the book.

This was a lovely memoir. The post-war period and how it affected her family in traveling and her uncle's PTSD. The writing is lovely. I enjoyed this book a lot.

I am a fan of Winspear’s writing but not normally a fan of memoirs of the authors I like to read. My expectations are usually misaligned. This was the case here, I expected a linear timeline with mysterious insights. While I got insights into where some of her characters came from or story lines, the telling often wandered and meandered and kind of lost me on the way. Her life and family are interesting.