You know, I've never taken to the idea that books can be too white, too middle-class and too, well, sort of First World Problem-y. This is the novel to convert many like me, however, and in throwing a historical light on a certain sort of problem, it's even further removed from life as we know it. The first chunk concerns Rosalind, a second and younger wife to a landed gent down in SW England; we discover he lost his first wife, to whom he was perfectly suited, in childbirth, and now, immediately post-World War One, with suitable men low on the ground, Rosalind has had to settle for the lumpen codger. She's there (a) to present him with an heir, if not a spare as well, which she will eventually – oh, how eventually – stumble her way to doing, and (b) for us to see that upper class, society women of the time had surprisingly little autonomy, freedom and self-awareness. Tell us something we didn't know, then.

The second chunk is more looking at the daughter she finds in the household already, and the events of one hoity-toity, plummy summer, where the estate is riddled with the foreign and the potentially lesbian and the bohemian and the bed-swapping arty types, amidst which the girl – Cristabel – decides there are enough bohemian-minded drop-outs to help her present a play. Thus slowly – oh, how cussedly slowly – we get to the title construction finally being mentioned, a third of the way through this lumbering stodge. Oh, and then it becomes a war novel.

As a reviewer you can often end up exaggerating things, but when I have said "you can take any percentage you like, trim that from the book and it will not suffer" I mean it, and the same is true here. Using a present tense for familiarity and immediacy, and styles such as diary entries and a newspaper review montage to speed us across a whole decade, do kind of suggest the book wants to be shorter, but it's stuck in the stilted, yawnsome style of the time in which it's set. For all it might want to have a modern light on a timeless problem like feminism and individuality, it's back there and then, propped up by endless cushions against a drooping garden tree, silver spoon in its mouth and twenty servants hand-washing the flower blossoms needed for its foot massage – and moving at about the same pace.

Beyond the fact the characters are very unlikeable with their plumminess and lack of engaging qualities, and how many of the situations they get in are as fresh as last week's bread ration, it's bloody obvious our author can write – this debut has several flashes of fine phrasing – and research. Even bits of sentence that seem to be a waste of ink, such as one about consecutive station stops on a train journey having different names, are there to show the naivety of the young characters thinking this pointless thought. Bespoke layout, in a concrete poetry fashion, is also fresh and fancy, but ultimately nothing was enough to make me grateful for having picked this up. I came here for the theatre connection, and connected with it far too scantily.

I loved The Whalebone Theatre, a fantastic, funny but also heart-breaking historical fiction novel. The characters were well developed, the storyline was interesting and the writing was gorgeous. I especially love how the timelapse between years was done in newspaper articles! My favourite part was the beginning when the siblings were building the theatre. Also, the front cover is stunning and I can see it all over bookstagram when the novel is released this summer.

This is a story that will stay with me for a long time; I cried, I laughed and I didn't want it to end.

An enjoyable book, but the first half could have been considerably shorter.

Christabel Seagrave is the daughter of Jasper and his late wife who died during childbirth. Jasper has very little to do with Christabel as he mourns his late wife. The book starts as he returns to Chilcombe with his second wife Rosalind.

The book really takes time before it gets going, but Christabel and her half sister The Veg, and her half brother Digby discover a dead whale on the beach, which Christabel claims.

Taras a Russian artist with a family arrives on the beach with two other women who happen to know Rosalind. Christabel with the help of Taras use the skeleton of the whale to create a theatre, where with The veg and Digby, staff from Chilcombe, Taras family put on a few productions.

The book jumps to WW11 Digby joins the army, Christabel as a WAAF and then a secret agent in France while The Veg now called by her proper name Flossie stays at home after her mothers death and her Uncle's disappearance to Ireland.

I have to say, the WW11 section of the book was well written and the most enjoyable part of the book.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS

This book opens with us getting to know Cristabel, and then as it continues, her siblings.
There's an almost magical bit, where they run wild and free, pretty much neglected by adults, but happy, and loved by each other.
That loves shines through as the book continues, and I'd what makes you care about them as characters.
The book never felt magical again to me, the harsh realities of war and being a grown up put paid to that, but it lodged the three siblings in my head, where I think they'll remain a while.
I chose this book for the cover. The inside is so much better.

I was enticed by the beautiful cover on this one (slightly daft given that I had a digital copy not a hard copy), and was very pleased to find out it's a beautiful story to match.

The characterisation is absolutely superb, which it needs to be given the plot itself is hard to pin down, part Railway Children or Dorset Downton, part Great Gatsby, part war novel. As it follows the various family and friends of the Seagrave family, we need to really care about them, and I did.

Each character was unique and well-drawn, but none felt like a caricature. Joanna Quinn's writing invested me in these characters and then sent them off to war - this made the last third so tense and gripping.

I loved it. Thank you to Penguin UK and Netgalley for proving me with a copy in exchange for an honest review - glad I can be honest and say I loved this one!!

If you’ve enjoyed Mary Wesley’s and Nancy Mitford’s novels, then you are going to love ‘The Whalebone Theatre’. Telling the story of a landowning family with the habit of collecting bohemian hangers-on over the first half of the twentieth century, at the centre of the narrative is Christabel Seagrave, an ‘odd’ little girl who becomes a teenage amateur theatre director and then a ‘Clerk Special Duties’ during WW2.
Alongside her story are also woven the lives of her half-sister and brother, although the latter is no blood relation. Joanna Quinn gives detailed depictions of their Chilcombe estate, the evacuation of Dunkirk and the Blitz in London to name a few settings as she takes us through the decades. Some of her figurative language is particularly memorable; the London bombings are perceived as ‘…a production set, and the scenery keeps changing. It is a production set, and the cast are here one day, gone the next. Only the sky is lit up, criss-crossed with movie-star searchlights while air raid warnings slide up and down the scale.’
A perceptive child, Christabel learns that, ‘if you find a way to give people what they want, they let you in…’. The theatre allows her to be admired for her unique strengths and to develop as a strong-minded, thoughtful young woman, despite an emotionally inauspicious start in life. The author is clearly championing feminist ideals whilst also acknowledging that all individuals need to find their own particular place in the world. ‘The Whalebone Theatre’ gives us a cast of memorable eccentric characters; however, there are moments when Quinn relies heavily on stereotypes to the detriment of the story.
A long read, you may well enjoy losing yourself in the life and times of the Seagrave family. This story is a strong debut and it’s not difficult to imagine it repackaged as tv drama in the future.
My thanks to NetGalley and Penguin General UK – Fig Tree for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

I really enjoyed this book, it was well written with good characterisation and a good storyline that had been well reseached and it showed. It was a heartbreaking story at times and heartwarming in others and I really liked some of the characters. I also need to acknowledge the front cover which I found so stunning visually. A good read that engaged me the whole way through, I couldn't put it down, historical fiction lovers would really enjoy this book.