The Whalebone Theatre: The instant Sunday Times bestseller

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I find myself unable to critique 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. This book is possibly one of the most atmospheric I've read in a long time. It is beautifully written. The prose is LYRICAL. But if you expect to read it in a weekend, you're going to find it impossible for three reasons.

Why do you think the novel is broken into “Acts” as a structural device? How do the novel’s events map onto the typical five-part structure of a Shakespeare play? The length is such that at one point it felt like it could be two separate books (specifically when WWII started around 65% of the way in), but I still enjoyed every second and wouldn't have cut anything. rating. The title of this book and where it comes from in the story was the intriguing story line for me. That’s because I loved the character of twelve-year-old Christobel Seagrave, an odd and quirky but intuitive girl. When a whale washes up on the beach near to Chilcombe Estate in Dorset 1920’s Christobel plants a flag and claims it as her own, fighting off the idea it belongs to England. With her half siblings Flossie and Digby, they spend their time, creating their own plays and stories. The bones of the whale literally become their theatre, a place where they can dress up and become other people. Soon they are somewhat of a sensation as they present plays for their hamlet to great applause.

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Utterly heartbreaking and joyous . . . I just disappeared into The Whalebone Theatre and didn’t want to leave.” —Jo Baker, author of Longbourn

But his mind seemed unable to keep company with the fact he was dead. It was desperate, laughable, and in the face of such nonsense, his mind kept jumping up and scampering off to its favourite haunts. Even as he was walking behind his coffin with little Cristabel holding his hand, he was trying to remember the name of a lissom Italian actress he’d met in Covent Garden. But far away from the big house, as the children grow to adulthood, another story has been unfolding in the wings. And when the war finally takes centre stage, the siblings find themselves cast, unrehearsed, into roles they never expected to play.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. 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.’ What do we learn about Cristabel and Digby through their letters, sent and unsent? What’s unique about their relationship, including Cristabel’s notion that she “willed [him] into being” (524)? In what ways does war, and generally the threat of death, create the conditions for love to blossom throughout the novel? Consider the relationships between Rosalind and Jasper (and Willoughby), Cristabel and Leon, Flossie and George, and Digby and Jean-Marc. Which of those pairs do you think would have been possible in other contexts? Joanna Quinn was born in London and grew up in Dorset, in the South West of England, where her debut novel The Whalebone Theatre is set.

Overall though - and in spite of its careful research and fine writing - ‘The Whalebone Theatre’ is a long road of uneven and unnecessary length that eventually detracts from the whole. After a night of thunderstorms, the air is as fresh as clean laundry. The chilly mist...swept away, lifting like stage curtains to reveal the coastline in its spring colours...[Cristabel] discovered a dead whale washed up on the pebbles...[She ] has just turned twelve; there isn't much she doesn't know. She had read nearly all the books in the house...She admires things done in an adept manner...the feeling of being up in front on her own...high on her whale, looking down at Digby and the Veg." The Whalebone Theatre will soon be born. "Their most-loved books have been read so many times...But the worlds contained within the books do not remain between the covers, they seep out and overlay the geography of their lives." Overall, this is a good read with a fresh premise of the children’s creativity, especially around the dead whale.Love inspires art, but not only love. Art inspires art. Anger, hatred, hunger—these can also inspire. But whatever it is, however it comes, there always is the work. The work of art is never done. Even when my hands are empty, I am still painting.”

But as the children grow to adulthood, another story has been unfolding in the wings. And when the war finally takes centre stage, they find themselves cast, unrehearsed, into roles they never expected to play. The story follows the oddly structured Seagrave family, genteel aristocrats with a slowly failing estate and a brood of loosely related siblings who will inherit this mess and have to figure it out. But before they even get a chance to do that, WWII happens and will send them in unexpected directions. There was another peculiar thought that niggled at Cristabel: none of them knew her. None of them knew her name. Even the guard on the train didn’t know her name, and she had rather expected he might. Just absolutely wonderful . . . It is so doggone readable, and you really care about these characters . . . The book just really keeps you reading.” 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.

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If you were to think about fiction as you do interiors, the latest trend might be compared to sparse, angular furniture positioned with a great degree of care in large, echoey grey-white rooms. The light is beautiful. Everything is impeccably considered — curated, even, so that a lone cushion seems imbued with meaning. Unsmiling people waft about looking beautiful, and perhaps more intense than the occasion requires. The older observer finds it all ravishing — so pared down, so elegant — but notes that there’s nowhere comfortable to sit and after a while their bottom starts to hurt. As exciting as ”The Whalebone Theatre” might sound, this one doesn’t really deliver. It tells a story about a British upper-class family during the WW2. There’s love, loss, spies, war, and of course a whale.