Description
Book Synopsis______________Wonderfully written, humorous and humane, and beautifully evocative of the time'' - Independent Summer ReadsSmith''s writing exudes wisdom and humour, and her descriptions ... are vividly drawn'' - Times Literary SupplementHope and energy radiate from every sentence of this lovely volume as it emerges into the light after its long sojourn in the cemetery of forgotten books'' - Daily Mail______________A classic and unforgettable tale of three girls who abandon their middle-class comforts for an adventure of a lifetime during the Second World WarIn 1943 Emma Smith joined the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company under their wartime scheme of employing women to replace the boaters. She set out with two friends on a big adventure: three eighteen-year-olds, freed from a middle-class background, precipitated into the boating fraternity. They learn how to handle a pair of seventy-two foot-long canal boats, how to carry
Trade Review'It must have been an astonishing imposition for the canal people when war brought them dainty young girls to help them mind their business, clean young eager creatures with voices so pitched as to be almost impossible to understand." So begins this joyous and rare memoir of a time when a group of girls ‘in the deep sea of adolescence' work the barges in England during World War Two. One envies Emma Smith's precise and sly humour in her portrait of life on the canals, the details on the opening of a lock, and most of all the catching of that era and that adventure that now will live forever' *
Michael Ondaatje *
‘It's wonderfully written, humorous and humane, and beautifully evocative of the time' * Independent Summer Reads *
‘Hope and energy radiate from every sentence of this lovely volume as it emerges into the light after its long sojourn in the cemetery of forgotten books' * Daily Mail *
‘Smith's writing exudes wisdom and humour, and her descriptions of the main activities involved [...] and of the accidents and frustrations, as well as the moments of teenage revelation, exhilaration and joy - are vividly drawn' * Times Literary Supplement *
