Lynn Michell – författare

The date is 1937. The place Liverpool. Mary escapes a loveless childhood by marrying an infantry soldier who glories in active service.

The date is 1952. The place Nairobi.  The Mao Mau are rising up to reclaim their land in bloody guerrilla warfare. Mary’s adulterous love affair unfolds in the empty rooms and grounds of deserted colonial houses. Trysts go unnoticed until political and personal events move towards their shocking finale. 

Spanning four decades, this is a novel of both epic proportion and intimate narration. At its heart is the poignant and powerful love affair between Mary, the young wife of an infantry soldier, and an intelligence officer who truly understands Africa and its plight. Their secret meetings are conveniently camouflaged by the hysteria and violence surrounding the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. We watch Mary from her too-young marriage, to her success in the Red Cross during WWII, to the jaded reunion with her husband, to the headlong passion of mature love. The ending is a bombshell.

This story, spanning four decades, is told by Mary, her husband, David, and their young children, Eve and Clara, who listen at doors and speak their own fear-fuelled version of the truth.

White Lies is about different kinds of war and different kinds of loving. It explores the fragility and partiality of memory and our need to re-write the past so that it does not jar with the stories we tell ourselves and others. 

This is a book of many voyages.

There is the meandering trail that leads to the right boat for crossing an ocean. There is the preparation – stalled in a sweltering American boatyard while arguments about equipment and finance combine with the narrowing of the hurricane window. There is the crossing itself which starts with the wrong weather, broken boat parts, torn sails, serious leaks and a very seasick crew as Scarlet gets blown off course in unkind seas.

Male and female monologues form the internal voyages. The skipper’s thoughts range from the challenges of fitting a wind vane to almost losing an arm in a tangled genoa to the navigational system of the Puluwat Islanders. His wife describes diminishing supplies, the damp, bruises, blue eggs, jellyfish and her anxiety about the deteriorating health of her son who, suffering from ME, should not have been persuaded to go with them.

External and internal journeys criss-cross as Scarlet sails on across 3000 miles of ocean. She would have told a different story.

A faded seaside town in autumn is the backdrop for this elegiac story of a vulnerable boy and the adult who befriends him. Eight year old Neville, who counts stars and steps and grains of sand, is the first to notice that the red beach hut is occupied again. Abbott is on the run from his job and his demons after a disturbing cyber attack. Kindred spirits, man and boy collide. Their fleeting friendship, played out on the margins of sea and shore, brings the honesty and compassion both seek. But others watch, judge and misinterpret what they see and Abbot’s past runs at their heels. 

An evocative portrayal of two outsiders who find companionship on a lonely beach. Lynn Michell’s subtle and nuanced third novel is about the labels we give people who are different and the harm that ensues.

Alice Green realises that reaching fifty is much the same as being invisible so why not make the most of it? Her head-in-the-sand husband doesn’t notice the clothes mountain and the piles of pretty stationery.

When two police cars draw up outside her house in leafy Edinburgh, Alice knows the game is up. While dealing with the present, she backtracks through her memories, recasting the events and people who chipped away at her confidence and contentment over the years. 

Run, Alice, Run is an irreverent coming-of-middle-age novel that looks with irony and black humour at the way society defines and diminishes women of all ages.

When you are alone, adrift and displaced, how do you find yourself?

Set on a small Scottish island, The Water All Around Us is a poignant novel about loneliness, roots and belonging. 

Recently arrived, crofters'' child, Fenn, is troubled by being different and not fitting in. Incomer and marathon swimmer, Jess, is running away from personal tragedy. A young whale, separated from his pod, swims in the wrong direction and embarks on an arduous, heart-breaking journey. All three are at home in the water, but when their lives connect in the sea that fringes the white-sand beaches, their paths converge and collide with disastrous consequences.

Under the surface of this thought-provoking novel are messages, carried quietly and bravely by the whale, about the damage we are doing to our oceans.

In a career spanning over sixty years, Rosa has painted more than 600 paintings in the style of the Renaissance artists, partly as a tribute to her adored father, Clive Branson. Resilient and determined, Rosa rejected the expressionist styles taught at Camberwell and the Slade and faced gender discrimination and scorn as she embarked on a lonely path to learn the techniques of the Old Masters.

In a career spanning over sixty years, Rosa has painted more than 600 paintings in the style of the Renaissance artists, partly as a tribute to her adored father, Clive Branson. Resilient and determined, Rosa rejected the expressionist styles taught at Camberwell and the Slade and faced gender discrimination and scorn as she embarked on a lonely path to learn the techniques of the Old Masters.