The Missing Letters of
Mrs Bright
by Beth Miller
For the past twenty-nine years, Kay Bright’s days have had a familiar rhythm: she works in her husband’s stationery shop hoping to finally sell the legendary gold pen, cooks for her family, tries to remember to practice yoga, and every other month she writes to her best friend, Ursula. Kay could set her calendar by their letters: her heart lifts when the blue airmail envelope, addressed in Ursula’s slanting handwriting, falls gently onto the mat.
But now Ursula has stopped writing and everything is a little bit worse.
Ursula is the only one who knows Kay’s deepest secret, something that happened decades ago that could tear Kay’s life apart today. She has always been the person Kay relies on.
Worried, Kay gets out her shoebox of Ursula’s letters and as she reads, her unease starts to grow. And then at ten o’clock in the morning, Kay walks out of her yellow front door with just a rucksack, leaving her wedding ring on the table...
This emotional and heart-warming novel is for anyone who knows it’s never too late to look for happiness. Fans of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, A Man Called Ove and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry will fall in love with this feel-good and moving story that shows you that the best friendships truly last forever.
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
My rational brain pointed out that this was kind of irrational, and my irrational brain said, ‘Yeah, so?’
It was a folded piece of yellowing paper, and in my childish writing, with hearts dotting the i’s, I had written at the top: ‘Things to do by the time I am thirty.’ This was underlined twice in red biro. The date: 5 June 1982… Teenage Kay must have assumed she’d better get everything done by thirty; for afterwards, there’d be nothing but senility and the grave.
Once again, I’d have to amend my mental list of the top ten things I wished I’d never seen.
I looked at him, appraising him with an objective eye. There were always little things one didn’t like about one’s boyfriends. You tended to overlook them, prioritise other things as more important. Leon, for instance, had patches of awful acne on each cheek, and treated any mild suggestion that he speak to a pharmacist as an infringement of his human rights. Now, with Theo standing in front of me, fake-beaming, I realised that with his thin face and shifty eyes, he looked exactly like a weasel.
I had a bath and did all the woman -going-on-a-date things I hadn’t done for years… and had a little trim of the old lady-garden, not that I was planning to sleep with him, obviously not, he was clearly a café-lothario, but just in case… In case what? I heard Rose say. In case there was a freak accident that involved your pants coming off in public?
My Review:
This was my introduction to the stellar stylings of Beth Miller and I was an instant fan. Forgive my exuberance and probable abuse of exclamation marks but I reveled in this book! The Missing Letters of Mrs Bright was thoughtfully written and gently chronicled and may be best suited for those of us more mature beauties on the other side of fifty, but being on that side of the age stick I found it flawless. The writing was as profoundly insightful and perceptive as it was cleverly entertaining. I was fully engaged from page one and adored Beth Miller’s witty prose, seamless writing style, enticing and quirky characters, and ample servings of clever levity that were skillfully woven in all the way through. The storylines and writing were easy to follow and continually poked and prickled my curiosity. I was enjoying the tale so much I would have gleefully continued on for several hundred more pages. Beth Miller has a new fangirl and I have a new favorite author at the top of my list.
I have been told that I write like a tall blonde, so that's how I'd like you to picture me.
I've published three novels, with one more about to be born, in January 2020. I've also published two non-fiction books. I work as a book coach and creative writing tutor.
Before writing books, I did a lot of different jobs. I worked in schools, shops, offices, hospitals, students' unions, basements, from home, in my car, and up a tree. OK, not up a tree. I've been a sexual health trainer, a journalist, a psychology lecturer, a Ph.D. student, a lousy alcohol counselor, and an inept audio-typist. I sold pens, bread, and condoms. Not in the same shop. I taught parents how to tell if their teenagers are taking drugs (clue: they act like teenagers), and taught teenagers how to put on condoms (clue: there won't really be a cucumber). I taught rabbis how to tell if their teenagers are druggedly putting condoms on cucumbers.
Throughout this, I always wrote, and always drank a lot of tea. I'm now pretty much unbeatable at drinking tea.
Social Media Links
https://www.bethmiller.co.uk/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beth-Miller/e/B00PWNOA2Y/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1
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