I looked forward to this memoir, being a big fan of Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series. Winspear and I are of an age, and it was sadly interesting how different the post WWII childhood experience was so very different in England and in the U.S. Winspear definitely focuses on the positive aspects of growing up in the countryside: the communion with and appreciation of nature, the natural responsibility given to children, the work ethic and the simple joys. But certainly there were some stark times with financial challenges and lack of amenities we take for granted, like indoor plumbing and washing machines and the abundance of food. But you get the feeling she wouldn't have traded any of it, because of the lessons and strength of character she gained.

She writes with great care and affection of her parents, but it's clear her relationship with her mother was difficult. She adored her mother but suffered from her acerbic tongue and belittling. She is thoughtful when trying to fairly describe some of their interactions. The amount of detail that she remembers is amazing -- even given that she went back and interviewed family members and took notes. Obviously she remembers scenes and emotions very well -- and it shows beautifully in her fiction works too. This is a loving but honest portrayal of her family and relatives and of the time and place she grew up in.

Thanks to the publisher and to Net Galley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

"The family--that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape nor, in our innermost hearts, ever wish to."
The author shares her lifelong love of stories and storytelling and love of her family in this delightful memoir. She grew up on stories. Mostly those where her mom was the storyteller. And she shares her memories of every moment in this book.
It reminds me when someone shares stories from their day, and inevitably someone says, "you should write a book." This is what that book would look like.
The book is a series of "re-memories," or a reliving of memories. I am in awe of Winspear's ability to recall so many very specific details such as those from a traumatic accident that occurred when she was only 18 months old...as the reader, you feel like you are the 18 month old watching it happen. I was also struck by just how much the author and her family lived...truly lived a rich and interesting life from what others might expect to be a mundane daily life....experiencing each and every moment...the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between.
I feel like I should have read this more slowly, over a period of time, savoring the different memories. More like I would have enjoyed hearing or telling my own family stories. I love listening to family stories, and I love sharing stories with my kids. It's sort of a lost art in some ways. The book helped me to even more appreciate my own "re-memories".

I have read and enjoyed all of the books in the Maisie Dobbs series. This new memoir by Winspear opens a window into her life growing up in the countryside of post WWII Britain. I understand more clearly the rich inspirations of her stories in her novels. Growing up and working on hop, fruit, and vegetable picking farms, living in a Romany community, and hearing about her interesting family background is a gift to the reader of a unique time and place. The idyllic English countryside is peppered with colorful characters and historic detail. I had to go online to see a video of the Hawkhurst train line mentioned in her memoir, which closed in 1961. I can almost see Jacqueline, her mother and brother traveling on these trains, the detail is so vivid. Living in this serene setting away from the noise of London is good for Winspear’s family but there is no lack of hardship or laborious hard work. Details of harsh effects on loved ones proves wars don’t end with armistices. Interspersed with poignant and eye opening stories is love of family and friends, especially among Jacqueline and her father as they go on walks in the country, learn about the value of work frugality, and resilience. This Time Next Year We’ll Be Laughing is a true gem of time and place gone by but teaches us to have faith in things that matter. Highly recommended. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review of this book.

It was too slow and I tried to get into the story but it just didn't work.
It may not be a book for me as I'm not a fan of slow books unless there are other elements to keep my attention. This book just didn't do it for me.

ARC/Netgalley

I really really wanted to like this because I adore the Maisie Dobbs series but I was just not fully drawn in by this memoir. I do appreciate seeing the parts of her life that clearly informed her mystery books but I greatly prefer her fiction writing.

Just as wonderful as reading one of her Maisie Dobbs novels, this memoir has a depth of description and remembered feelings that truly makes the reader feel the time and place. It's clear that many of the events in Winspear's childhood shaped her later writing. Fantastic background information about a favorite author!

Having read all of the Maisie Dobbs novels, yet knowing virtually nothing about their creator, Jacqueline Winspear, this was a lovely opportunity to read about her life and background. A childhood of poverty and hardship and telling of life’s struggles. A great read.

Jacqueline Winspear is the author of the popular Maisie Dobbs mystery series. In this memoir, she tells of her growing-up years in post-World War II England. This really is a memoir, but it is a fascinating read.

Winspear recounts her family's troubles (there were many), their resilience and hope in the face of war, bombings, and illness. Her grandfather struggled with shell shock, a reminder of his time in World War I. Her mother was evacuated during World War II and lived for a time without her parents. The most stable period of her life was when they lived in Kent and harvested hops. They had very little but none of their neighbors had anything either. Some of her family's dearest friends became the Gypsies who looked after those people they liked.

The author remembers everything that happened to her, apparently a result of a childhood accident involving a head injury. Her mother told her many stories and they all stayed with her. She uses this ability to enrich the stories contained in the book.

Jacqueline Winspear is a Saturday's child. Her memoir, "This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing," lays out, in the same readable style as her Maisie Dobbs novels, the hard work that led to her publishing success.

Remember Maisie's father? A supportive loving father doing his best as a single parent to care for his daughter. That's her father. Remember that Maisie's mother died when Maisie was very young? There's a reason for that; not until after her mother's death in 2015 does Winspear finally understand her relationship with her often-difficult mother.

Winspear's childhood in 1950s England is far different from those her American contemporaries lived. Her parents chose to live in County Kent after a very hard war.

They lived in a caravan and learned from gypsy neighbors how to make a living in the meanest of times. Making rent for the house they eventually found meant all the family helping with the hop harvest and picking fruit during all seasons. Poverty left them dependent on trains and buses for frequent visits to the doctor and deprived them of indoor plumbing and electricity until Jacqueline and her brother were nearly ready for college.

But they did educate the children, Both wound up with satisfying careers and took up popular dancing in their later years. The book title is Mr. Winspear's frequent refrain to get the family through the hard years, and it did.

Both Jacqueline and her brother wound up in California. Not until 2003 did she publish her first Maisie Dobbs novel, but when inspiration arrived she was ready to use all the stories she grew up hearing and all the things she had lived through to tell a unique story openly welcomed by readers and reviewers. When the time was ripe, her story blossomed.

This book is good reading for people interested in life in England during the middle decades of the 20th Century. For fans of Maisie Dobbs, it reveals the origins of many plot lines.
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"This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing" is a memoir by author Jacqueline Winspear. The book outlines her parents time during WWII, and her turbulent childhood. Unfortunately, the book seemed more like a therapy session than a readable memoir. The author jumped from time period to time period, person to person, making the book hard to follow. The book was repetitive, slow moving, and unfortunately a bad read. Overall, not a book I would re-read or recommend.

Her descriptions were so vivid I felt like I was back in the English countryside with her. I would read chunks of it at a time, but I could easily not think about it when I wasn't reading it.

This was definitely a leisurely-paced account of her childhood. It also covered family members' (especially her parents') origin stories and their war wounds. I wish it were a bit more chronological because I would read some part about her working as a teenager and the next chapter she would be a small child again. If you came to read about her being a writer, you'll be very disappointed. Winspear talks about it a little, but usually in the context with what her tale usually talks about: how poor she was and how hard everyone had to work. Indeed, the title is a quote from her father, which he said every time the state of affairs was miserable.

I would say if you like Winspear's novels, you'll like this. And if you like memoirs and want to enjoy something engaging, you'll also like this.

I have read all of the Maisie Dobbs books so I was super excited to hear that Jacqueline Winspear was releasing a memoir. Her life was certainly a life full of storytelling. It was most interesting to see how the stories later evolved into her books. I found it fascinating to see where the stories and characters originated. If you are a Maisie Dobbs fan, I highly recommend it!

Jacqueline Winspear, author of the award-winning Maisie Dobbs series, has written a fascinating memoir about herself and the family who made her who she is. The title refers to what her father always said when the family was going through a hard time. There were a lot of hard times for the Winspear family, but there was also joy and love and happy days.
Ms. Winspear’s memories are long and vivid, beginning with an incident when she was an infant in a pram. She paints vignettes of her life growing up in post-war England that are vivid and full of detail. One can almost smell the spicy scent of the hops she and her family picked in the English countryside, breath in the smog covering London,
Much of the memoir focuses on her parents’ early lives, as their experiences shaped her own. Both her mother and father lived through harrowing times as children during World War II. Her mother and her sisters were evacuated to the countryside for safety at the start of the war, but were unfortunate to be placed with unkind people. Her father lived in a silent home, trying not to disturb his grandfather, shell-shocked from his service in the Great War. The military recruited him in his early teens to be a message runner in the midst of the Blitz, and later assigned him to work with explosives, the very worst thing to do to a gentle man who treasured peace and quiet.
Ms. Winspear has great talent as a writer. Her prose is beautiful, lyrical, at times heartbreaking, always thought-provoking. Readers familiar with her Maisie Dobbs series will recognize many of the scenes in this lovely memoir.

This Time Next Year We’ll Be Laughing

is the honest and lovingly written memoir by Jacqueline Winspear about her growing up years in rural England and especially about her parents lives and the profound effect they had on her.

She was the daughter of a painter/decorator father and a civil service/bookkeeper mother. Her mother was forced to become a farmer to survive when her children were small because the children could be taken to the fields where the picking was done.

Although she adored her Mum and Dad they were strict and made her growing up years somewhat difficult. She ended up going to teachers college and did well there although she never taught. Always with a desire to become a writer from an early age, she first worked for an airline and satisfied her yen to travel, then sold some stories she wrote to an industry publication and became a journalist.

Nine years later she put a story together that became a manuscript...then her first book. Maisie Dobbs. Instant success. Now there are many more. They are filled with stories from her imagination based on stories from her growing up and others told her by her Mum who she says was an incredible story teller.

Winspear and her younger brother both moved to America and specifically to California. She lives in the country but near the city, San Francisco. She loves the natural world and always has, a love acquired early on from walks through the woods with her Dad.

Her memoir is fascinating, well written and definitely worth reading especially if you’re a Maisie Dobbs fan.

If you like Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series and wonder where her ideas come from you must read this book. I found it a little hard to get into but once I read I few chapters I knew I needed to finish. Not only do you learn about Jacqueline’s life but you also learn about her grandparents, parents, and extended family. Three generations of family living in England during the 20th century beginning with World War I sets the stage for our storyteller’s memoir. Stories range from sad to funny but always provide you with a glimpse of what it was like to grow up in post World War II England.

This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing by Jacqueline Winspear, author of the Maisie Dobbs mystery series, is a wonderful read that transports readers back in time to rural English life with farm carts, hop harvests, and gypsy caravans. Themes of poverty and hard work are balanced with the warmth of family and community. Book clubs will find this full of topics for discussion.

Every year I eagerly await the next volume of the Maisie Dobbs series. I m very selective when choosing a biography or memoir. I’m so glad I chose this one! I made many connections with so much in her novels, however, you don’t need to read her books to enjoy this memoir. Winspear portrays her immediate and extended family’s life in Kent. She enjoyed a close relationship with her dad, less so with her mum. Perhaps there was some jealousy on her mother’s part. Jacqueline was devoted to her mother in spite of everything. Her parents moved from South London because they preferred country life in spite of the hardships and financial struggles. I highly recommend this memoir if you enjoy reading about life in the fifties and sixties.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read this arc in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to the author for writing about her complicated family history, which to some extent we all have. It's easy to understand why she has written about the world wars and the aftermaths. Her stories gives us more insight into what the Brits endured and "carried on."

Whether you are a fan of Winspear's novels or not, you will likely enjoy this entertaining and heartbreaking memoir filled with stories of her childhood and stories of the impact of WWI and WWII on her family members. Winspear herself was born in the late 1950s and led a life filled with moments of awe and joy, hard work and poverty, joy and sadness. She tells the stories in somewhat random order, but I was never confused about the timeline or topic. Her stories are engaging and full of emotion. At times I was laughing, at times in shock or tears. This just reinforced how good a writer Winspear is. Her memoir is chatty and engaging and filled with history, much like her novels. I can't wait to recommend it to my friends who are also fans.

NOTE -- I mentioned "fans" a couple of times which would indicate that this book would only appeal to her readers. I don't think you would need to be familiar with her works to enjoy this memoir. It adds another dimension to know the stories that inspired her writing, but the memoir stands alone. Do you want to learn more about life in rural England in the 20th century? This is the book for you -- I learned a great deal and enjoyed every minute. It was just an added plus for me that I also enjoyed her novels.

A remarkable memoir not sentimental and gritty. It's in the same vein as Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight.