Ruby Lennox was conceived grudgingly by Bunty and born while her father, George, was in the Dog and Hare in Doncaster telling a woman in an emerald dress and a D-cup that he wasn't married. Bunty had never wanted to marry George, but here she was, stuck in a flat above the pet shop in an ancient street beneath York Minster, with sensible and sardonic Patrica aged five, greedy cross-patch Gillian who refused to be ignored, and Ruby...
Ruby tells the story of The Family, from the day at the end of the nineteenth century when a travelling French photographer catches frail beautiful Alice and her children, like flowers in amber, to the startling, witty, and memorable events of Ruby's own life.
I envy the reader who has never read this brilliant novel. It is sharp, funny and heartrending. If you want to, you can read into this all sorts of postmodern literary allusions: I particularly enjoyed spotting the references to Tristram Shandy as that was one of my favourite classic novels. But you don't need to play that game to enjoy and feel uplifted by this extraordinary generational novel about the power of untold family secrets. It bears re-reading, over and over again.