She's Leaving Home

The author’s astute observation underpins her clever, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant evocation of a coming of age. - Sunday Times - Elizabeth Buchan

Bakewell is at her best evoking the excitement of the early days of television. Her most effective portraits are those of the Granada Studios. Bakewell vividly evokes the modernity of the building in Manchester, the vibrant atmosphere and the mingling of staff in the canteen… Bakewell’s attention to detail is impeccable… [An] affectionate conjuring of an era gone by. - New Statesman - Samira Shackle

Plenty of wry humour. Many of Joan Bakewell’s observations and anecdotes also convey the distinct impression of personal experience - particularly once timid Martha reaches Liverpool, where she finds herself surprisingly at home among her new bohemian friends, her horizons broadened by such heady delights as poetry readings, CND protests, sex and Earl Grey tea. - Daily Mail - Amber Pearson

An accomplished writer of fiction on the evidence of this, her second novel…Bakewell conjures up Liverpool and a dreary nearby town in the early Sixties, sensitively portraying through her characterisation an era on the cusp between post-war privation and Sixties hedonism… Bakewell does capture both the intense self-absorption of the young and the disappointments of middle age in what is a very readable and perceptive novel. - Daily Express - Vanessa Berridge