O, The Brave Music

‘Sometimes I think that was the happiest day of my life, those hours of heat and silence and colour, along with David high up on the moor. But then I remember that I have said that of many other days, so I cannot be sure.’

A female narrator looks back on her childhood in a coming-of-age novel set before the First World War. Ruan is an intelligent and imaginative child, who gradually comes to understand the nuances of the adult world around her, as she moves from the Manse, under the strict ...