Netherwood [Large Print] [Hardcover]

This, the first in a new series, is a tale of two very different Yorkshire families a century ago, one headed by a miner, the other by Lord Hoyland, the mine owner.
Young, beautiful, Eve Williams, her devoted husband Arthur and their little family all spring to life from this book's earliest pages. Indeed, even the minor characters are solid, believable, well defined and great fun to meet.
Arthur works in Lord Hoyland's mines and earns little for long hours and dangerous work. The atmosphere of day-to-day living and survival for even these comparatively well treated families is made clear and hardship and hunger are always close by.
When Eve is widowed and faces ruin she finds that her skills as a baker are her salvation and, with a friend to help and encourage her, she soon finds her business catches the eye of more than just friends and neighbours.
Though Eve holds centre-stage with her friends and family, Lord Hoyland and his also star and both strands of the plot are told equally well. There seems little to challenge Eve's rise ever upward to success and new love so this is a happy read, though not all those around her wish her well.
Light romance? Saga? Whatever. This should not really have been my cup of tea. However, it was, and good, Yorkshire tea at that.
This is a perfect read for Downton Abbey fans (and a great number of other folk, too) and I honestly look forward to knowing what happens next.

This book has a lot of good things going for it. It's a drama, a social and industrial history lesson, a love story, and a family saga encompassing a rich family and a poor one. Most of all it is an intelligently written story, and running through it is a mischievously wicked sense of humour.
Eve is a character very much in the `woman of substance' mould. She finds herself in a situation where she has to work to provide for her three children, and story revolves around how she does this, with style to say the least, and the people she meets and interacts with along the way.
The Earl and Countess of Netherwood, Clarissa and Teddy Hoyland, own Netherwood Hall, as well as three local collieries, and most of the land and property in the vicinity. This aristocratic family become entwined with Eve and her business ventures, and there are a few surprises along the way. I can't say I have read many novels which have made me feel hungry, but this one did, and even had me checking out the recipes at the back of the book.
What I particularly liked was the characterisation. The author skilfully reveals enough for the reader to engage with the feelings and behaviours of each and every player in the scene. By page 20 or so, I knew who Eve was, and found myself getting acquainted with several of the other characters as well. Anna and Lady Henrietta are two other prominent female personalities who get to star in some very strong storylines, along with their male counterparts Amos, Toby Hoyland, and Eve's son Seth, to name but a few.
This is a book that flows and the writing keeps up a good pace to hold the reader's attention. I felt their sadness; I smiled a lot; and I shared in the triumphs. I've just ordered the sequel, and am looking forward to the next instalment. If it's as good as this one, all I can say is keep `em coming please.

I've never watched Downton Abbey, but after reading Jane Sanderson's Netherwood, I can see where the comparison and the attraction might lie. Set in a Yorkshire mining town around 1904, Netherwood isn't Sons and Lovers or Women in Love, nor is it Lady Chatterley's Lover, lacking much of the grime, earthy poetry and literary frankness of D.H. Lawrence - but it draws from the same source towards different ends, with a more modern sensibility for a new readership.

Part of the difference - and this is the attraction that will determine whether this goes on to be a successful series of books - lies in the depiction of the characters and its gentler, more equitable attitude towards both sides of the class divide. The privileged lifestyle of the upper class family of Lord Hoyland is given almost equal time with that of Eve Williams, the wife of a working class miner in the coal pits owned by and turning in a considerable profit for the Hoyland family. There's certainly some sense of the misery and social injustice in the conditions endured by the lower classes for the benefit of a rich few with little care or conscience for their position, but it's not the main purpose of Netherwood.

Rather through an episodic series of events - entertaining, tragic, funny and romantic - Jane Sanderson's book takes a rather more open look at the period, creating strong believable, human characters (even secondary figures have unique, recognisable characteristics and attitudes), seeing the good and the bad in the lives of those upstairs, as well as those downstairs. Some local historical colour is well integrated into the story, and it's an interesting period that - much as it did with Lawrence - lends itself to a fascinating examination of the changing social attitudes and emergent feminism that were beginning to challenge the prevailing gender and class divisions in society at this time. It doesn't get heavy on that kind of historical and social detail, but it's all there nonetheless within the figure of Eve Williams, within the events that change her life and that of British society forever.

With strong characters and so much local colour to draw upon - and perhaps some family history - the author makes this hugely entertaining to read, understanding the fascination that exists for the lives of people on both sides of the social and the north/south divide. She is able to pour this into delightful and well-drawn characters who you are quite happy to spend some time with, through events small and momentous, romantic and confrontational, historical and cookery lessons included, with a lightness and charm that makes it all wonderfully readable.