Blogging Bert

A novel that beautifully captures the voices of a range of people from different classes, many Londoners,  who find themselves consigned to a countryside sanatorium for tuberculosis sufferers.  The now forgotten cruelties of TB and its treatment come alive in this book set in post-War Britain. It is also a shrewdly observed fictional slice of social history, firmly based in a very real past that shows us how our lives have (been) developed to the present day.  The story is shot through with humour and unsentimental reticence which makes it all the more engaging. The limitations of its settings are actually its strength as the writing draws the reader into the lives of the patients and the medical staff.  Linda Grant delivers the best combination of a storyteller revealing the human heart through a vivid tapestry of social, political and medical histories.