I'm a big fan of the South West of England, so was really looking forward to reading this novel, set in Dorset. The first part of the novel is the 'set-up', introducing us to the three children, Cristabel, Flossie and Digby in 1920, their relationship with their parents, place and each other. It's the better written of the two halves of this novel, and it introduces the idea of the Whalebone Theatre when a whale is washed up on the beach, the bones of which become the theatre. BUT, the second half pushes the time into the era of WW2, and it did feel, a bit, as though the writer was out of her comfort zone. The narrative drive that existed in the first half was slowed down considerably, largely because of unnecessary repetition and reminders of what had gone before. Actually, that was a bit frustrating. Sadly, also, this second half was a bit predictable, which was a real shame because the set-up is really very effective. There is potential here, though, and I'd be keen to read whatever this writer produced next.

Grateful thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

I enjoyed Joanna Quinn's writing from the first moment. The character of Christabel is well drawn and an attractive main character. The relationship between the three children and the way they handle their strange upbringing is intriguing and entertaining, particularly when they link up with the artist's family and Christabel starts to direct plays. A quirky and entertaining story, which is what I expected from the title.
The story lost momentum when the Second World War starts and the children, now young adults, are dispersed into different jobs. There were detailed descriptions of wartime conditions, which have been covered well in other novels, and did not relate to the title. The story then became a different style of narrative covering the specialised training and dangerous assignments of Christabel in Vichy France, more of a thriller. The link to The Whalebone Theatre was lost and we seemed to be in a different story altogether, an exciting one but it did not relate to the title of the book.
I loved the ending where the two sisters return to their childhood home and rebuild their lives to meet new circumstances, and find their true loves in the process.

Joanna Quinn employs an immediacy of tone right from the outset of ‘The Whalebone Theatre’, sweeping the reader up in her jazzy, quick-tempo style of writing:

‘Taras has a Russian accent, which means that he places unusual EMphasis on unexpecTED syllables while his vowel sounds roll and yaw. Some words are stretched almost beyoooooooooooond endurance while others are pushed. Out. With. Dis. Gust.’

Quinn has a gorgeously assured and vital authorial voice, which appealed to me right away and is one of the reasons why this is a five-star read for me. I was bewildered whilst reading to think that this is Quinn’s debut. Many novelists persist in failing at this strength of voice, even into their second and third books. ‘The Whalebone Theatre’ is brilliant in the true sense of the word, that it glows with light and casts brightness round it:

‘Outside, the summer burns on. The sunlight through the floral curtains tinges the room with pink like the inside of a conch shell or the fleshy glow of the world as seen by a child with its fingers pressed over its eyes.’

I really connected to this novel and felt truly grounded within it from start to finish. That’s a product of the strength of Quinn’s authorial voice, but also testament to her precise and commanding style. At the opening of this novel, and through the first acts, I would liken ‘The Whalebone Theatre’ to a cross between ‘Wakenhyrst’ by Michelle Paver and ‘A Skinful of Shadows’ by Frances Hardinge.

The titular theatre is at the heart of the novel: the theatre belongs to the young Cristabel Seagrave, who finds and claims the beached Fin whale on the coast of Dorset, using its massive skeleton as a stage set for her motley theatre troupe comprised of the children, artists, models, poets, party-goers, and society hangers-on that find themselves gravitating to the Chilcombe estate. And this story belongs to Cristabel, just as does the theatre. The novel itself constitutes her set: painted scenery, a one-dimensional rendering of setting, but vibrant and transporting. And for me, some of the most thrilling moments in the novel happen at the intersection of character and setting. For instance, later in the novel, Flossie and her German POW beau walk through a landscape full of disintegration that reflects the dissolution of their brief, and doomed, relationship; marrying the characters to the scene in which we view them:

‘When the sun finally starts to set, they walk back through the woods […]. The footpath is cracked and dusty. Although there are a few weeks left of summer, the countryside is already drying out. The fields around Chilcombe are pale as straw, the hedgerows full of papery seedpods and feathery grasses; things are coming apart from themselves, fraying at the edges.’

All throughout the course of the narrative, as it stretches across decades, the estate at Chilcombe lends character detail to the players, as they interact with the novel’s metaphorical stage-set:

‘Rosalind, standing in the doorway, pictures herself standing in the doorway. A slim silhouette against a rectangular glowing space. She adjusts her fox-fur stole; waits. […] It gets dark earlier and earlier now. In the daytime, the autumn sunlight is low and rich, the countryside ablaze with trees in amber, umber and ochre. The trees on the estate stand proudly as their leaves change colour, the way people hold their heads high in front of a firing squad. But when the sun drops below the horizon, the chill is very sudden and very quick.’

Repeatedly, the exterior Dorset landscape externalises vital character traits and the way characters see themselves, or amplifies emotion or sensation in a subtle form of pathetic fallacy. Thus, the woods by the estate are written differently for the children at the beginning of the novel, than they are for Rosalind, their mother/stepmother, on the same day:

‘The woods to the west of Chilcombe, mostly elegant beech trees with a few oaks and pines, now stand in a sea of bluebells, a flood of flowers lit up by sunlight filtering through new leaves. Here and there are clumps of geometric bracken and the white pompom bursts of wild garlic flowers, filling the air with their profligate scent. The three Seagrave children, wending their way through the trees, find they are carrying with them a careful silence. It is mid-morning, a Tuesday in the first week of May, and since entering the woods, their conversation has fallen away. They are all listening, although they couldn’t tell you what they are listening for. They know these woods well, but the bluebells have altered them […]. The bluebells go on as far as the children can see, and the lines of beech trees – both the vertical trunks stretching upwards and the diagonal lines of the trees receding into the distance – repeat and cross-hatch and overlap until it is hard for their eyes to follow them. The vanishing point vanishes, the defined becomes the undefined, and the trees become an endless wall. They cannot see through it. That there is a world beyond the trees seems doubtful. There is only the wood and the stillness of the wood.’

‘Rosalind Seagrave walks through the dappled trees. The sunlight has stretched across the woodland floor throughout the day, across the celandines, anemones and dog violets. And this light will go on into the night, because the sky, on these shining spring days, does not want to go black. Even after the sun has gone, there remains a strip of amber across the horizon, and above that, a pale wash reaching upwards to a band of aqua and above that, a deep blue that is the colour of the very edge of space, and then and only then, high up and forgotten, the indigo black of the night sky, waiting in the wings, carefully holding the golden bauble of envious Venus.’

The vivid, compellingly drawn characters remind me of Natasha Pulley's characterisation in ‘The Bedlam Stacks’. But, of course, they’re wonderfully original. Look at the finely drawn description of Taras Kovalsky, the Russian artist:

‘Taras then returns to jabbing at his canvas, as if the children were no longer there. His lack of interest in them means they can examine him properly, their first real artist. From the front, he is workmanlike and oblong. There is a weightiness about him, and accumulation of meat over muscle, and his hefty arms hang like joints in a butcher’s window. If the front of Taras is the artist-entertainer, the back reveals the lifter-labourer – the graft behind the artistry. The combination is something akin to a circus strongman.’

Character is informed by actions: it’s the way Rosalind and Flossie approach the piano differently; the different ways Cristabel and Digby eat apples. Character creation is defined as much by contrast as description. And also, powerfully, through the lens of other characters:

‘[Cristabel says] quietly, “I don’t know how to draw Digby.”
She has tried, but every time she puts her piece of charcoal to the paper, she stops, because she immediately hasmit wrong. They both look over to Digby, who is lying on the hay bales, caught in a dusty shaft of light.
The trouble is, he is many things. The brother she wanted and the brother she has, two different notions entirely, and cousin Digby, who is not really her brother, and actual Digby, her most faithful and cheering companion. He is a drawing scribbled over and screwed up and unscrewed again and kept in a pocket always. His presence in her life like a dog sleeping on the end of your bed: a loyalty so fond and constant, you only notice it on the rare occasions when you wake up and it’s gone, and then all you want to do is get up and find it, so you can go outside and play. Or perhaps he is simply too close to her for her to see him properly, like a mirror held right in front of her face.’

I am deeply engaged with Flossie and Digby. Digby is often the object of the reader’s gaze, but Flossie, like her half-sister, is sensitively dynamic as a subject:

‘She looks at her hair. Bits of it are pointing outwards in peculiar ways, like someone giving confused directions. Her mother always tells her to tuck it behind her ears, but Flossie is aware her ears stick out a little, so prefers to keep them hidden. In this, as in much else, she feels her state of being is a series of unsatisfactory concealments, each of which reveals something else that should not be shown. To tuck back her hair reveals her sticky-out ears. To highlight her waist emphasizes her wide hips. To show off her ankles means displaying her sturdy calves. It is a series of feints and misdirections, in which she is both the magician waving the coloured handkerchiefs and the assistant with the fixed smile holding up the white rabbit by the scruff of its neck, and somehow also the rabbit too, limply dangling, proffered up; all of which has the effect of making her permanently anxious she has somehow come loose of herself, that the doves have escaped from the hat.’

The whole of the first section of the book, looking back, seem to have been purely a backdrop, a scene-setting, providing history and the colour of childhood and upbringing, world-building, for the fundamental core of the novel which is what happens to Crista, Digby, and Flossie as adults in World War II. Even saying that, this first section is a whole book in itself. Besides, I could have read another 200 pages about the exploits of Crista in her pre-teen/early teenage years, with Leon and the savages, Taras, and the young Whalebone Theatre. Cristabel IS this story, and it is as an adult that we come to truly loving Crista. Other characters – even her brother-cousin and half-sister – serve as foils to heighten our ability to identify with her and make her shine more brightly.

Reviewers might call this novel 'sweeping': the war-time postcards, letters and diaries are effective, intensely moving, as vigorous and energetic as Cristabel, Flossie, and Digby’s dialogue elsewhere, if not more forcefully so. They sail the reader through action at such a snappy pace. I find myself unable to critique or remark upon the last few acts of the novel, because they are so absorbing that I abandoned my critical reader and surrendered to wholehearted emotional entanglement with the novel and the characters. I also feel that I can't say too much about the penultimate acts because I'd be giving away (even the smallest) secrets that need to be lived through as they are read, with immediacy. I will say that, having finished the novel just this moment, I am simultaneously wrung out and filled up.

Other reviewers will be able articulately to discuss the strongly written, finely crafted and compelling feminist messages in this book, as encapsulated in a discussion between Cristabel and Digby over their work with the French Resistance:

‘How many Frenchmen do you know who would be keen to take orders from an Englishwoman?’
‘I don’t think they’d care. If you were good, and I know you would be, they wouldn’t even notice you were a woman.’
‘But that’s the crux of it, isn’t it? Either they notice I’m a woman, and they don’t want me because of that, or I have to hope they somehow don’t notice, which leaves me eradicated either way.’
‘I think you’re making it more complicated than it needs to be,’ he says.
‘I’m not making it anything. That’s what it is. The only reason you think it’s complicated is because you’ve never thought about it.’

Everything in this novel, is shown and not told. There is no pandering to the reader, and all the workings-out by the author have been completed and buffed to a high sheen so that the narrative voice comes across as highly developed, assured, and deft at linguistic turns, throwing out grammatical tricks as though language were a well-used tool, worn and polished with knowing and handling. The confident style is awe-inspiring to a well-heeled reader.

This book is sensational. Crista will stay with me forever. Reflecting upon it after finishing, 'The Whalebone Theatre' is comparable to Sarah Winman's 'Still Life' for its scope and character engagement, and maybe Diane Setterfield's 'Bellman and Black'.

‘April is blown away by another round of storms, thunder rolling about the bay like a wooden skittle ball, then May steps in with a curtsey, and Dorset blooms with a giddy enthusiasm, like a young girl at her first county ball spun about the dance floor by a strong-handed farmer. […] Chilcombe’s horse chestnut trees gladly wave their ice cream cone flowers, and the buttercup meadows are all swaying invitation.’

My sincere thanks go to Fig Tree at Penguin Random House UK for the chance to read and review a digital copy of this title via Netgalley. As this is an advanced copy, all citations are subject to change and edit.

This story is set at Chilcombe House and in a time spanning from the end of WW1 to the end of WW2. Three children are born to the family, Cristabel, and her half sister, Flossie, and then a son, Digby who is actually no relation to Christabel but fulfils the role of longed for brother.
The first part of the book deals with the children's childhoods, seen mainly from Cristabel's perspective. She is the one who leads the others on fanciful adventures that end up in the setting up of a theatre in the grounds of the house and collecting two huge whale bones from the carcass of an animal washed up on the nearby beach. The children's parents/guardians live a party lifestyle and appear to leave their offsping to bring themselves up.
The second half of the book follows Cristabel, Flossie and Digby during WW2. Flossie stays at Chilcombe and becomes a landgirl while Cristabel and Digby are both send to France on special missions.
This is quite a long read and I have to confess there were patches that did not hold my attention but other chapters in which I was so invested I couldn't put the book down. The descriptions and details are well written and well researched - for example the descriptions of Cristabel's journeys and drops into occupied France were fascinating. It is a written about a time of great social upheaval when the class system was being levelled out to some extent and people could make their way up in the world and this is all well reflected in the book.
The author deals well with loss and grief and tackles the individuality of the characters with humour.
It is the theatre that ties this book together, through the different characters and the different time zones, but it was the details of the plays that I found most unreadable.
Overall I've given it a four star rating. I think it would have been five if it were a little shorter and if some of my favourite characters hadn't been written out along the way.
Many thanks to Netgalley and Penguin General UK - Fig Tree, Hamish Hamilton, Viking, Penguin Life, Penguin Business for the opportunity to read an arc in exchange for an honest review.

I would classify this as a slow-burn but I think it's more of an epic, due to how much ground it covers. That said, it's well-researched and I always find stories about families over time to be interesting and complex. The period this novel is set in only helps, as there's so much societal upheaval. Thanks for the ARC!

We follow the story of an unusual family, orphaned children, landed money, soon to be impoverished by extravagant spending, a stream of the smart set and the avant garde passing through. Children left to run wild, and artistic types all contributing to the colourful characters and their stories. We pick up the story on the arrival of a new mother for our three year old heroine, there being little to choose from as suitable matches after the First World War, but the mothering does not come naturally, or marriage for she is there primarily to provide an heir, with little affection on both sides.
It is a thoroughly enjoyable read, and my only complaint would be that some of the most interesting characters disappear all too quickly, fate unknown. We have the added interest of another war, with real danger instead of children’s games and theatrical play. There is real humour and affection in the siblings feelings towards each other, and wonderful characterisation in the accompanying cast. A lovely book.

Thank you for allowing me to review this book. I'm sorry to say that it didn't really win me over it began well, with Christabell growing up with a dysfunctional family and her half siblings Flossie and Digby. Christabell set up a theatre after a whale was washed up on the nearby beach. The Whalebone Theatre where the children performed plays. The second part of the story js set during the 2nd World War as Christabel joins up to serve undercover in France, Digby is also serving in France whilst Flossie stays behind in the Land Army and looking after the family home.
Recently I have read a few books set in this time and this one just didn't offer the same level of interest for me. I'm sure others will enjoy the family story.

This is a gorgeous, evocative feast of a novel - the sort you hate to put down and have to read slowly because you don’t want it to end. It tells the story of three siblings which starts just after WW1 and continues through to the end of WW2, From a privileged but odd childhood in a large stately home to coming-of-age into a world teetering on the verge of war, Christa, Flossie and Digby are tied by bonds of love and loyalty and duty. Joanna Quinn has assembled a cast of amazing characters and tells their story beautifully - this is a must read and one of the best novels I have read this year.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. There is a great sense of period, and the characters are believable and engaging. There is nothing particularly novel in the story, but it is well-written and compelling, and I enjoyed it far more than I did "I Capture the Castle"

Thanks Netgalley and the Publisher. Not sure about what to say about this book as it was just okay and nothing else. Sorry

This is a story of three children, Cristabel, her half-sister Flossie and Digby, their cousin and cousin/half-brother respectively, who live in a big house in Devon in the 1920s. Charismatic, orphaned Cristabel, is their leader and the centre of their world of play and make-believe; she is strong, self-sufficient, imaginative. The first half of this novel is an engaging, vivid narrative around children and adults (rich, bohemian, intelligent, silly...) which is quite a delight to read. The Whalebone Theatre of the title is constructed before our very eyes - a whale comes to die at the beach and this image of death and regeneration (the dead animal becoming the literal bones of their theatre) is meant to have a resonance throughout the novel.
Alas, I was not convinced by the second, the adult WW2, narrative to the same extend. And whilst the childhood story was for me compelling and original, the siblings' WW2 exploits didn't engage me or presented me with an original perspective - I had "already read" so to speak, similar stories and was impatient about developments, which were without exception predictable - ie I predicted what was going to happen, and it did happen. Whilst the first part was detailed enough to give you a textured panorama, the adult part was far more general, even generic. It was far too long for me, I didn't care what happened to the characters.
As an exploration of actual emotions (loss, vulnerability) and social circumstances (plight of women, class) it had its moments, especially in the first part (there are two novels in one, for me). I might not be the intended audience, as some of the fine writers commenting on the novel seem to think this is going to become a classic like I Capture The Castle. I am unsure.

This book follows the Seagrave family from the 1920s to after WW2. The story encompasses the family, their friends and acquaintances, plus various servants. Chilcombe is an estate that is steadily being reduced due to the family’s expensive lifestyle, and the house itself is becoming very rundown. Whilst the children have an idyllic lifestyle within the estate, it’s beaches and woods, they are very much left to their own devices, being neglected by parents who prefer to indulge themselves.

This is a debut book, and the writing is evocative and descriptive, with some really lovely passages. There is no doubt that the author is capable and competent. The start of the story with the children and their adventures was captivating. However, the section of the book regarding WW2 wasn’t what I was expecting, it is far too long and at times I felt my attention wandering and had to skip some pages, something I am loathe to do.

Would have been worthy of 5* if only parts of it had been shorter!

Thank you NetGalley.

There are quite a few genres that are catnip to me - anything with a library for instance - but I am most addicted to coming of age, mid century fiction, probably thanks to discovering I Capture the Castle at a formitive age. Luckily I am spoilt for choice with the republishing of many classics from Noel Streatfeilds adult fiction to discovering Monica Dickens Mariana, whilst Eva Rice and Hilary McKay continue the tradition with a twenty first century eye. And we can now add Joana Quinn to the roster thanks to this stunning debut.

The Whalebone Theatre starts soon after World War One in the iconic setting of a faded country house by the sea where a feral neglected child waits for her father to bring his new bride home. The father, Jasper, has spent his life feeling inadequate except in the too-short halycon days of his first marriage, his bride, Rosalind, has missed her chance of a good marriage and so settles for this awkward widower. Trapped in a lonely marriage, Jasper retreats even more, Rosalind turns her attentions to Jasper's charming younger brother and Christabel continues to run wild and wait for the promised brother.

Fast forward a few years and Christabel has been joined in the attic by Flossie while the longed for boy, Digby, has his own room in the main house but prefers to sleep with the others. Imaginitive, fearless and precocious, Christabel is their cherished leader as, largely uneducated, they live in a world of Shakespeare and Robert Louis Stevenson. An encounter with a Russian painter, his brood of children and unconventional domestic arrangements leads to the founding of a theatre and a dream for Christabel and Digby, but as they grow older, the shadows of another war grow nearer.

This book is so beautiful, so compelling, so of its era, so well-peopled I didn't even notice it was written in third person present, because this is one of those all-too-rare examples of a book where that tense works.

I couldn't put it down, I didn't want it to end. An instant classic. Read it.

I would struggle to be able to review this book due to issues with the file/download. The issues stopped the flow of the book. The issues are:
- Missing words in the middle of sentences
- Stop/start sentences on different lines
- No clear definition of chapters.

Not sure if it was a file/download issue but there were lots of gaps, stop/starts which really ruined the flow. I would love the chance to read a better version as the description of the book appeals to me.

Joanna Quinn has made an impressive debut here! I didn't read beyond the first part of the book description, as I was so entranced by the amateur theatre idea, so the main part of the novel came as an unpleasant surprise. I prefer not to give too much of the plot away in a review but if I say that the book goes through WW2 and I always avoid any books about war, you will perhaps understand my mixed feelings as I read about the vivid characters that I'd come to love all enter wartime in various roles. The book is alive with shining detail from the outset with the childhood of the characters described so you feel you know their house and grounds as well as they do and the three main characters are very different and separate, very individual from the start. I couldn't put the book down without finding what happened to them so went against my usual inclination and read on and very pleased I did. The writing goes along at a good pace, filled with such memorable scenes so you almost believe it's written from first hand experience. It's a book you want to go and live in when the children plan their amateur theatre, ordering the servants about as extras and declaiming their lines to each other. The lesser characters are also vital to the book, all very well drawn and often with a very light touch. For me books sometimes have too many similar characters who blend together, but that isn't a problem here where the book is peopled with lively individuals throughout, all of them very much individual, although there are a lot of them. Phrases and moments from the book will stay with me, definitely and the writer is one to look out for in the future without doubt. I especially loved the theatrical moments in wartime Paris with links between Greek theatre and wartime narratives. I read an electronic version of the book, so I've no idea how long the book really is, but I could have read for a long time more.

This book is compelling from the first page, when we meet three-year-old Cristabel, waiting for her father to arrive with his new wife. She has a stick in her hand. Although so young, she lives battles and fighting. No one pays her much attention except the wonderful maid, Maudie. At one point, Cristabel bribes Maudie to read her The Iliad and wonders again why, as in the Henty books she’s read, all the characters are boys or men. She asks what ‘woman-like’ (as in ‘woman-like they fall’) means. Maudie replies that it shows Mr Homer didn’t know her (Maudie).

Cristabel longs for a brother and after Flossie is born she gets one: Digby. The children live in a world of their own, based on stories and acting. They all sleep together in the attic; they’re like one. The Seagraves live at Chilcombe, an old house and estate near the Dorset coast. One day, Cristabel finds a beached whale and plants a flag in it, claiming it for her own. Much later, when an artist, his harem and a troop of his children (whom the Seagraves call ‘the savages’) have moved into a cottage on the estate, the whale is stripped of its flesh (a village effort) and the bones moved up to the cottage, where they are arranged to form a theatre. Cristabel becomes obsessed with this. As a born organiser she bullies everyone until the first production is put on, graced by many local visitors. The outdoor theatre becomes famous. (I wondered how much the author was influenced by the open-air theatre at Dorset’s Brownsea Island.) The children have a series of French governesses but otherwise run wild. When Digby is sent to Sherborne School, it’s the only normal thing that happens to any of them. So far, so charming.

Children have to grow up, war comes and this is where, for me, the book goes off and I lose interest. Digby volunteers to fight, enlists as a private but ends up in Special Operations. Flossie keeps the house going until she joins the Women’s Land Army. What can Crista do? She’s convinced she can do anything her brother (actually her cousin) can and persuades old friend of the family Colonel Perry to help her first to get in the WAAFs and then Special Operations. War is dangerous and frightening yet somehow, we lose the spirit of what those children were. No spoilers about the ending.

One of my chief reasons for requesting this book is that it was recommended by Francis Spufford. Huh. If he thinks people will love this book in the way they love I Capture the Castle, I fear he’s quite wrong. It reminded me strongly of two children’s/YA books: Hilary McKay’s wonderful The Skylarks’ War and Codename Verity by Elizabeth Wein. I found it a book of two parts: the first excellent, the second, not so much.

Absolutely beautiful story of the bonds of family and the importance of theatre and story in times of both peace and war.

Loved this story. The characters were charming and the story delightful.
I would definitely recommend.

I felt like the book cover and description was a little misrepresenting of the actual story. I guess I just found it a little too slow and too depressing at times and less magical than anticipated. But it might have just not been my cup of tea.

*** I received an early complimentary copy of this book. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own

This is the story of a famliy and its experiences from the 1920s to the end of the second world war, based intially around their life in a Dorset country house, and then moving to France under German occupation during WWII. The author writes exceptionally vivid descriptive prose which is a joy to read. Her style is cinematic and floods the senses with lush visions of countryside, climate and characters. I enjoyed reading this book and would certainly recommend it. The only criticism I have is that I think it is too long: The plot follows history but as a story I was left wondering which is the part of history the author wants to bring to my attention.