Alas, all books must end but while you are in the middle of Winman’s ode to connectedness, healing and musings on whether it is possible to experience great heartache and pain and move on through life, you are deep in a world where the lost are not spared pain but find their way through it, where hope and romance find you in the least expected and most imaginative of ways and where your past is not a determinant of your future but simply a part of you that is carried forward by life in all its manifest, contrary complexity. It is the story of eighty-nine-year-old Marvellous Ways, whose mystical and intriguing world centres round a creek in Cornwall. Marvellous has many tales to tell, but she is waiting for one last story to become part of her own, that of Francis Drake. If you have been reading along with me – I would love to hear what you thought in the comments below. As is standard, in all my book club geekery, I have fished out some questions for you to muse on:

Ridicule, misunderstanding – Marvellous is by no means a conventional woman of thought or deed and has consequently suffered for it – lost love, missed opportunities, a fractured family whose gaps have been filled by fancy and imagination, all could be considered to have blighted her life. Certainly Marvellous, a spry woman who swims naked in the creek near her caravan, who lies a candle in the half-sunken church that sits in an island between the waters and who lives and eat off the land that is her home and a character in itself, has had reason enough to give up on life on many occasions. At a recent event Sarah Winman proclaimed, “I’m not interested in the probable, only the possible.” That is particularly apparent in Marvellous’ story. She is a remarkable character and woven throughout her narrative are elements of fantasy and wonder. It truly indulges your imagination. But it requires you to come to the book as a non-skeptical reader, to suspend belief or judgment and just be open to simply embrace beautiful storytelling.

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Hi Sarah. Congratulations on being chosen to take part in the Richard and Judy Book Club Spring 2016! How did it feel to find out A Year of Marvellous Ways had been selected? It’s Good Friday and the start of a four day weekend so there’s no excuse not to snuggle up with a cup of tea and a good book. The latest Book Club review comes once again from Emma Kingston from Year of the Yes. As grounded in thought as Marvellous is in the wild and manmade worlds around her, Winman’s book accepts the grave realities of life but refuses to accept them as the be-all and end-all.

A Year of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman, author When God Was a Rabbit, is such a book, richly told in ways so breathtakingly heartfelt and lovely that you wish you could stay in its richly-wrought world, communing with its quirky but thoughtfully intense characters forever. Well, interesting – as a child, I hated reading! Well, ‘hated’, that’s a very strong word. No, it wasn’t really a part of my life, I am not a natural reader, that’s what I tell myself. It wasn’t really something that bedded down very early. Now I always have to add this as a caveat, because it drives my mum bananas: she did read to me as a child, and my father did. They bought me books, they took me to libraries, I couldn’t sit still! My imagination wasn’t one that was ignited by words, it was very much ignited by images, and me being out and about. So I don’t have one, but I do remember three books: Flat Stanley, Stig of the Dump, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, they were the three books that I do remember. And then I went out duly and imitated those lives out in the recreation ground. Probably that everybody has a story, you know, and people who are invisible in the world have an equal story to us, maybe a little bit more extraordinary at times. But everybody deserves to be listened to, and deserves to be seen. I suppose we’re entering a phase in society where a lot of people are invisible today, and I hope it’s a story that makes one section of society a little bit more visible.

A glorious poem of a novel - a story to read slowly and to marvel at the beauty of it -- Rosamund Lupton, author of SISTER The stories are touching and the twist of magical realism lends them a joyful, fairytale element * Daily Record * A book to savour, to read in wonderful, rich little bits like dark chocolate. Winman's prose is poetry, with a rhythm, a heartbeat, that carries you through like music -- Emma Hooper, author of ETTA AND OTTO AND RUSSELL AND JAMES

What is so appealing about A Year of Marvellous Ways in that in its pursuit of magical joy and hope, again expressed in ways so lyrical your heart will dance as you read, it doesn’t pretend that everything will be all right as some kind of foregone conclusion. And that marvellously doesn’t sound pretentious or overly-pronounced but authentic and real with a dash of the sort of otherworldiness and magic that many of us wish routinely came with everyday life. A breathtaking reading experience... a beautiful book that is unafraid to reveal the ugliness of the world * Toronto Star *

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The Winter Book Club gave me the perfect opportunity to give Sarah Winman’s latest offering a queue jump.