Susan Day – författare

A moving saga about the lives of four young women who live through the precariousness of the Second World War, telling how the events that unfold in the following fifty years shape them and their children.

Jen admires her father and Frank believes that his daughters are happy, but no one in any family knows the whole story.This family has fractured before, and been patched up by secrets and evasions.Now things are about to change. 

In the 1950s, two little working-class girls, Pat and Rita, become best friends. ‘Who Your Friends Are’ is about Pat’s friendship with Rita and her sisters as they grow into their very different lives. Rita is ambitious, becomes a model, marries a rock drummer. Pat follows Rita’s career with interest but without envy. She herself follows a conventional route through marriage, children, a job in a caring profession, and always believing in the enduring quality of their friendship.

Now Pat finds herself without a job, with her children all grown up and time on her hands. Her past history with Rita and her sisters is due for a reassessment – what will she make of it?

It is a story about friendship, loyalty and the everyday life (often mundane, sometimes exciting, at times tacky) of ordinary people who have grown up after World War ll. Susan’s writing brings to life the era of post-war change, with its thrills and disappointments.

Pat’s mid-life reflections point up sharply the poignancy of looking back, alongside the very different experiences of her present day world and its troubles. 

Susan Day’s style is economical and understated, but the book gives us a vivid insight into the needs and dramas of everyday life, and the emotions and tensions in Pat and Rita’s families. The characters are rounded and believable, and the lively and eventful story carries the reader along to the end.

A story of friendship and loneliness, of losing and searching and occasional joy.

Everyone in this novel would like to go back in one way or another – back home, back to the past, back to being friends, even back to being lovers.

There’s Bill who has recently been widowed and is feeling restless as well as bereft – he’d like to go back to his lost love from his student days. She’s Joan, also on her own and intrigued by the prospect of seeing him again. And there’s Viv, Joan’s friend, who becomes entangled in Bill’s search.

Meanwhile, Joan is having her own misfortunes at the other end of the country, and when she returns home she seems to have changed and to be unresponsive to Viv’s friendship.

The adventures of all three are woven into a comedy of errors in this gently under-stated story from the author of ‘Who Your Friends Are’, ‘The Roads They Travelled’, and ‘Hollin Clough’.

As usual, her sharp eye for detail brings to life her quietly woven characters, who find their way to a finale which holds possibilities and risks for each of them.

As deaths mount during the coronavirus pandemic a retired history teacher reflects on the much greater personal impact of the death of her sister 12 years before. Through the lens of lockdown, Pam Dearly looks back on her and her sister Pauline''s childhood, and how their family was affected by the Canvey Island flood of 1953. When they both settle in Sheffield they begin to lead very different lives, Pauline outgoing and socialble, Pam reserved and insular.

After Pauline''s death Pam finds herself more involved with her sister''s daughter and grandchildren that she had planned. The Great Sheffield Flood of 1864 resonates with her and she uses it for a local history project for her students, but she is not expecting to find herself and her new family affected by floods themselves, or to be the one who has to find a solution to their problems.

''Watershed'' is about loneliness and families, and unlooked for deaths. It speaks of how events can change the course of lives, and how, in the end, the smallest of human interactions can make a difference. Susan Day skilfully conveys the many and complex manifestations of grief; how it affects people so differently; how pervasive and long-lasting its reach really is. There are no tidy endings here, no happy-ever-afters - just an acceptance that life does and must go on.

Nothing is more important to Lynn and Dave Wilde than family. They have lived in Sheffield all their lives, and their two married daughters live close by. Their son Jamie meets and marries Niecey, and they have a son.

Niecey is something of an enigma - she is not from Sheffield, she appears to have no family, no friends and no past - but she is accepted into the family.

Then Jamie discovers, by accident, the birth certificates of two children, and consults his parents and sisters about what this might mean: are they Niecey''s children? did they die? who is their father? Does she know where they are? Does this explain her constant wandering around the city, her hovering outside school gates?

As the secret gradually comes out, each member of the family reacts to the situation in a different way. Tensions run high, and Niecey is forced to reveal her history. Finally, answers come from an unexpected source, and open the way to a resolution.

Sue Day describes with wonderful sensitivity, precision and honesty the life of this ordinary Sheffield family, as they are faced with an extraordinary dilemma.

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