All My Sins Remembered - Softcover

Rosie Thomas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0718135598 ISBN 13: 9780718135591

Publisher: Michael Joseph, 1992

Synopsis

By the bestselling author of The Kashmir Shawl, the evocative novel of hopeless love and careless betrayal

Bestselling author Rosie Thomas captivates readers once again with this sweeping saga of family, love, and betrayal set against a historical backdrop spanning two world wars.

Born within hours of each other, cousins Clio Hirsh and Grace Stretton were raised as sisters in the innocent days before the Great War. But jealousy and bitterness simmer beneath the surface of their friendship as Grace enchants all those who meet her, leaving shy and quiet Clio to fade to the background. 

Decades later, Clio recounts the story of her family to her biographer: her brother Jake’s wartime experiences and eventual medical career; Clio and Grace’s bohemian lifestyle in the world of literary London; younger brother Julius’ career as a concert violinist in pre-war Berlin. 

But for herself, Clio remembers a different story―one of tragedy, heartbreak, and secrets. And above all, the truth about her mesmerizing cousin Grace.

About this title

About the Author:

Rosie Thomas is the author of numerous critically acclaimed, bestselling novels, and has twice won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award. Born in a small village in northern Wales, Thomas discovered a love of traveling and mountaineering when her children were grown. In the years since, she has climbed in the Alps and the Himalayas, competed in the Peking to Paris car rally, and trekked in the footsteps of Shackleton on South Georgia Island.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A sizable English period romance by the popular Thomas (A Woman of Our Times, Bad Girls, Good Women, etc.), in which the cousins, joined by blood, do battle and then make up during the years of war (WW I and II)--through love and lust, domestic coziness, and political upheavals--until the close, when there's a veritable buckshot blast of doom. ``Grace and I are like...weight and counterweight...faces reflecting each other, but our souls [are] immiscible.'' It is the avant-garde painter known simply as ``Pilgrim'' who is hired (reluctantly) by Grace's father, the stuffy Earl, and her mother, Lady Blanche, to paint Grace and her cousin Clio when they're in their early 20s. The painting, The Janus Face, shows two beautiful women joined at the hip but straining away from each other. But while Pilgrim is busy between brushstrokes, Grace moves in on him (another of Clio's infatuations) and later discovers that she's pregnant. She'll marry failed-writer Anthony, however--a man whom she, at first, does not love and who will never know that daughter Cressida is not his. Meanwhile, Grace will love her husband, finally, and after his death, enter politics and become an MP. Through it all, the Hirsh family (kind professor Nathaniel, Clio's father, married Lady Blanche's twin), so busy and intellectual, are growing up: Jake and Julius become a doctor and famous violinist, respectively; Alice turns into a nasty little Nazi; Tabitha becomes a nun, and Hugo sensible landed gentry. Clio made a truly stupid marriage, but eventually meets true love--German Jew Raphael-- before the war. At the end, there's a trio of shocking deaths, and, in the present, an ancient Clio remembers.... A fat, shrewdly formulaic pastime with English country- house/cafe lures. Competent lubricous romance. (Book-of-the-Month Dual Selection for September) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Michael Joseph
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0718135598
• ISBN 13: 9780718135591
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 768