Showing results by author "Jacqueline Yallop" in All Categories

Can you remember the first time you encountered true darkness? The kind that remains as black and inky whether your eyes are open or closed? Where you can't see your hand in front of your face? Jacqueline Yallop can. It was in an unfamiliar bedroom while holidaying in Yorkshire as a child, and ever since then she has been fascinated by the dark, by our efforts to capture or avoid it, by the meanings we give to it and the way our brains process it.

Sister Bernard has lived in a convent in rural France for more than 70 years. In that time, a once youthful and lively cloister has gradually emptied, until only Bernard and two other nuns remain. Now, the halls will fall silent as the three women pack away their few possessions into wooden boxes and prepare to leave the building that has been their home for decades. For the nuns, the closing of the convent means more than losing a home.

Arthur Craythorne has barely married Queenie May when he is called away to fight in the First World War. When he returns from the trenches, he is a changed man. He struggles to contain the violent flashes of anger he confuses with love; and his two young daughters, Florrie and Alice, strive hard to please the stranger who calls himself their father.

A once bustling convent in the south of France is closing, leaving behind three elderly nuns. Forced for the first time to confront the community that she betrayed decades ago, one of those nuns, Sister Bernard, struggles to reconcile her uncertain faith with the passionate, impulsive actions of her youth.