I was persuaded to pick this up when I read a rave review and thought I’d give it a try. It’s very unusual, a bit of a mishmash of genres: erotica, historical romance, magical realism. It concerns Tully Truegood, a courtesan, imprisoned, pregnant, accused of murder, the year 1756, as she writes her life story, explaining her past and hoping to avoid being hanged. 

The Georgian age was a licentious one, and here you will find no end of vice and debauchery. You will also find passages of beauty, transcendence above the sordidness of Tully’s life, and ghosts with unfinished business. The plot is Dickensian, the sensibility more like Henry Fielding, and the magic never fully explained. Yet somehow it works.

Wray Delaney is the pen name of Sally Gardner, a children’s author. This was her first adult novel (she’s since written others). If you are put off by violence or explicit sexual content, this is not the book for you. If you are comfortable with a fairy tale for a mature audience that will take you from the backstreets of London to grand country estates and the assemblies in Bath, with stops in prisons, brothels, and Bartholomew Fair, and includes an encounter with highwaymen, a hypocritical clergyman, magicians, cross dressing, and arguments about feminism, then maybe this is the book for you. Highly original and, despite its subject matter, oddly romantic, An Almond for a Parrot is a strange, but satisfying, read.

HOW TO PURCHASE: AMAZON

NOVEL: An Almond for a Parrot

AUTHOR: Wray Delaney

YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2017

LEAD-IN IMAGE

Book cover, MIRA