Bought in the BHF shop in Ripon today.

A tale of three generations of women and their ownership of and summer holidays on a tiny island in the Norwegian archipelago. The first 90 pages or so are quite interesting and I would have given that 3 stars. After that it is an ambling, rambling account of nothingness that kind of just ends. It feels as though our third generation, Tilly, who must have written this St about age 30 really hadn't figured herself out or what she is going to do with her life, which makes for an odd biography when she takes up the bulk of hgd book. Personally I struggle reading the vague stories of the privileged rich - these are kids raised in rich London and boarding schools who have summer holidays on a private island. After uni she does go and live on the island for 3 months with grr then Irish boyfriend during late winter - spring, March to May. It will have been bloody cold but she will have skipped the worst in Jan and Feb. I don't know... I have lived in Scandinavia and I don't have the current trendy rose-tinted view that everything is better when it's Scandi and this book left me cold. I think if you want to read a good book about a Scandi rocky island summer, you would be better off with Tove Janssons Summer Book.

The interesting part is the start when she accounts the life of her grandmother, Mormon, who originally bought the island and started off the entire family tradition. She had a tough start in that her mother freaked out when she was a baby and ran off (only to die a few years later) and her father, so saddened moved off to the States without his daughter! So she was effectively an orphan with two living parents, raised by good relatives. So although she was raised with wealth and privilege, she did miss out. And seemed to be rather scatterbrained shall we say with her own later family.

If you enjoy that first part and then find it rapidly running out of puff and substance but keep going, as I did, in the hope that it will pick up.... I am afraid it stays in that same tone for the rest of the book.

Left in a cupboard in the holiday cottage for future holidaymakers to read.