The Whalebone Theatre: The instant Sunday Times bestseller

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Cristabel, Digby and Flossie all take on heroic roles in their own way during the war. How do you think their experience of acting in Shakespeare plays as children prepared them for these impactful roles? Which context --- theatre or life --- was more “real” to them? Consider the description of Paris as liberation begins: “It is like a carnival, with all its gaiety and danger. Nothing was happening and now anything might happen. All things are ending and beginning at once. Everything they have hoped for” (517). If you were to think about fiction as you do interiors, the latest trend might be compared to sparse, angular furniture positioned with a great degree of care in large, echoey grey-white rooms. The light is beautiful. Everything is impeccably considered — curated, even, so that a lone cushion seems imbued with meaning. Unsmiling people waft about looking beautiful, and perhaps more intense than the occasion requires. The older observer finds it all ravishing — so pared down, so elegant — but notes that there’s nowhere comfortable to sit and after a while their bottom starts to hurt. Playful, inventive, sharp, funny, The Whalebone Theatre offers the sort of reading experience that is remarkably rare, even for those of us whose happiest hours are spent with books: sheer, undiluted delight from start to finish . . . It breathes fresh, bracing air into the lungs of the multi-generational saga—and the very form of the novel itself . . . Most importantly of all, perhaps, Quinn gives us Cristabel, the sort of intelligent heroine that has been sorely missing from every other classic since Middlemarch . . . It’s impossible not to be charmed by this book.” —Susan Elderkin, author of Voices Overall, this is a good read with a fresh premise of the children’s creativity, especially around the dead whale.

What do we learn about Cristabel, from the time she is a child, that indicates her affinity for Shakespeare? Consider her reflection: “Cristabel has always wanted her life to be a story…. Uncle Willoughby was the first to insist upon the importance of her own behaviour and the first to suggest that she could leave an impression on the world, which meant that she existed” (426). Gorgeous . . . Delightful . . . Absolute aces . . . Reading it is like plunging into a tub of clotted cream while (or whilst) enrobed in silk eau-de-Nil beach pajamas . . . Quinn’s imagination and adventuresome spirit are a pleasure to behold, boding more commanding work to come.” — TheNew York Times Welcome to Chilcombe, "a many-gabled, many chimneyed, ivy-covered manor house with an elephantine air of weary grandeur...it has huddled on a wooden cliff overhanging the ocean for four hundred years." At this Dorset estate in the year 1919, Cristabel Seagrave awaited the arrival of her new mother, Rosalind, "a poised London debutante." Jasper Seagrave, widower, sought a young wife to provide an heir for Chilcombe. After the Great War and a shortage of suitable husbands, Rosalind settled for Jasper. This is partly down to Quinn’s decision to portray early 20th-century society as progressive and liberal-minded. Homophobia and class prejudice are never articulated. This gives the book a cosy, teatime feeling: delightful to indulge in, but denying us the thrill of fear that comes when characters are really up against it. It’s only when those reliable baddies the Nazis come into play that the adrenaline flows. There was another peculiar thought that niggled at Cristabel: none of them knew her. None of them knew her name. Even the guard on the train didn’t know her name, and she had rather expected he might.Destined to become a classic . . . Elegantly written and totally immersive, Quinn's debut is a wonder Daily Mail Beautifully compulsive ... The Whalebone Theatre will feel like a much-loved book even if you're reading it for the first time' Red Magazine

The Whalebone Theatre is a grand story, sensitively told; Quinn is surely capable of so much more, if she can only bring herself to break a few more bones on her stage.

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You know, I've never taken to the idea that books can be too white, too middle-class and too, well, sort of First World Problem-y. This is the novel to convert many like me, however, and in throwing a historical light on a certain sort of problem, it's even further removed from life as we know it. The first chunk concerns Rosalind, a second and younger wife to a landed gent down in SW England; we discover he lost his first wife, to whom he was perfectly suited, in childbirth, and now, immediately post-World War One, with suitable men low on the ground, Rosalind has had to settle for the lumpen codger. She's there (a) to present him with an heir, if not a spare as well, which she will eventually – oh, how eventually – stumble her way to doing, and (b) for us to see that upper class, society women of the time had surprisingly little autonomy, freedom and self-awareness. Tell us something we didn't know, then.

The story follows the oddly structured Seagrave family, genteel aristocrats with a slowly failing estate and a brood of loosely related siblings who will inherit this mess and have to figure it out. But before they even get a chance to do that, WWII happens and will send them in unexpected directions. This is a great book about a whale that washes up on the shore of the English Channel. And they build a Theatre from the bones. Joanna Quinn was born in London and grew up in Dorset, in the southwest of England, where her bestselling debut novel, The Whalebone Theatre, is set. Like Red Bull, The Whalebone Theatre gives you wings. You fly from 1919 to 1945, from a dusty old house in Dorset where debutantes dance underneath stuffed deer heads to the oily sea off Dunkirk, where German Stukas whizz over fishing boats. Now we’re in a velvety West End theatre watching Diaghilev’s dancers leap and spin; now we’re plunging through the moonlight over occupied France as a parachute unfurls silently above a secret agent like a big white lily. It's a long book, which isn't a problem unless you have a pile of books to read and you don't want to feel the pressure to finish this one. Because THIS is a book you want to take your time with, you want to allow yourself to fall in love with it. It's a big story that covers years.Rosalind had no love for her firstborn, a daughter. "... it looks like a vegetable...but at least she will have a film star name...Florence." An heir was what everyone wanted...boys could drive motors...be interested in snails, maps and warfare. Finally, a son and heir...Digby. Quinn has a sublime touch: Cristabel and her troupe are unforgettable, as riotous in comedy as they are heart-breaking in tragedy.” —Frances Liardet, author of We Must Be Brave It is Taras who encourages Cristabel to cultivate her artistic inclinations and put on a play. This initiates one of the book’s themes of play-acting, which runs right through from Rosalind, valiantly pretending to be a happy wife and mother, to the English agents in the second world war, when a far more serious pretence is required from those parachuted in to occupied France. Quinn hammers this home a little too hard at times – “My new uniform is quite the best costume I’ve ever worn,” Digby writes in 1939 – but it’s a pleasing device. The arrival of the whalebones at Chilcombe is an event in and of itself. What is the significance of taking something that technically “belongs to the king” (197)? Did the transformation of the theatre into a garden during the war actually change anything about what the theatre is being used for by the family?

His presence in her life like a dog sleeping on the end of your bed: a loyalty so fond and constant, you only notice it on the rare occasions when you wake up and it’s gone, and then all you want to do is get up and find it, so you can go outside and play. As exciting as ”The Whalebone Theatre” might sound, this one doesn’t really deliver. It tells a story about a British upper-class family during the WW2. There’s love, loss, spies, war, and of course a whale. During the war, Cristabel and Digby take on personas that are necessary for them to stay alive, and to keep others alive. What satisfaction, and risk, do they derive from doing so? How do they continue to reinvent themselves after the war, even beyond life? Discuss the way that Taras sparks the children’s creativity and imagination. How does he complicate the male presence in their lives up until that point?I don’t think they’d care. If you were good, and I know you would be, they wouldn’t even notice you were a woman.’