The Palace of Strange Girls

By Sallie Day
Hachette, $13.99, 335 pages

The Palace of Strange Girls is a lovely, refreshing book that brings the reader into the internal struggles of the four members of a British fabric-mill family during their 1959 summer holiday in Blackpool, a gaudy, seaside tourist town.

Author Sallie Day effortlessly leads us back and forth through the minds of each Singleton family member, weaving an exploration of the relationship between happiness and desire. Seven-year-old Beth’s body, frail from a harrowing heart surgery, is no match for her adventurous mind. Sixteen-year-old Helen fights to break free from mother’s rigid confines. Jack has just received a shocking letter from the love of his life-a woman he met on Crete during World War II and whom he had previously believed had died in a bombing raid. Ruth is obsessed with achieving domestic perfection and convincing Jack to buy them a nicer house.

What makes The Palace of Strange Girls especially enjoyable is how Sallie Day has incorporated details of the life and society of cotton fabric-mill families like the Singletons. For example, each chapter opens with an excerpt from Beth’s I-Spy at the Seaside book, and both Jack and Ruth can judge a person by the quality of the weave of cotton they are wearing.

Reviewed by Megan Just