My Friends, George and Tom (Large Print)

Duncan, Jane

ISBN 10: 0816164568 / ISBN 13: 9780816164561

Published by G K Hall & Co, 1977

About this Item

LARGE PRINT;X-LIB, Books in Good shape. Dust Jackets are worn.
Jane Duncan was the pseudonym of Scottish writer Elizabeth Jane Cameron, best-known for her My Friends series of semi-autobiographical novels. She also wrote four novels under the name of her principal heroine Janet Sandison, and some children's books. She was born in Renton, West Dunbartonshire and brought up in the Scottish Lowlands where her father was a police officer, but much of her childhood was spent in the Highlands on the Black Isle in Easter Ross, on her grandparents' croft "The Colony", the "Reachfar" of her novels. She graduated in English from the University of Glasgow and did various secretarial jobs before serving as a Flight Officer (Intelligence), WAAF during World War II. Afterward, she lived in Jamaica for ten years, returning to Jemimaville, near "The Colony", in 1958 as a widow. In 1959 Duncan became something of a publishing sensation when Macmillan Publishers announced that it would be publishing seven of her manuscripts. The "Reachfar" (My Friends) series is narrated by Janet Sandison and follows her life (which in outline parallels that of the author) from the World War I period through to the 1960s, depicting the people she encounters and showing how her crofting upbringing influences her in whatever society and geographical location she finds herself.

Seller Inventory # ABE-6155787833322455766

Bibliographic Details

• Title: My Friends, George and Tom (Large Print)
• Publisher: G K Hall & Co
• Publication Date: 1977
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0816164568
• ISBN 13: 9780816164561
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fair
• Seller catalogs:
  • Large Print
  • INTRIGUE; ROMANCE; FICTION

About this title

Synopsis

Janet Sandison comes home to the small fishing village of Achcraggan in Scotland. Behind her are ten years of happiness with her husband Twice, whose death has brought to an end their life on the island of St Jago in the West Indies. Before her lies a new career as a novelist and a return to the countryside of her childhood-and above all to George and Tom who were her closest friends, mentors and allies, in those early days. But now, Reachfar, the family croft on the hill overlooking Poyntdale Bay, has been sold and George and Tom in their old age are living cheerfully if haphazardly in Jemima Cottage in the village. Janet, George and Tom quickly take up their lives together after nearly forty years apart; Janet buys and converts an old barn on the shore and the three of them set up house. Janet, who has not found it easy to face the loss of her beloved Twice nor to adjust to the strange new world of the professional writer, rediscovers with delight that the old Reachfar values still hold a firm grip on her family and neighbours, but the one thing she cannot face is the ruin of the Reachfar croft itself. Not even the urging of her young nephews and niece- the Hungry Generation-will persuade her to climb the hill. This psychological problem is only a small part of the dramas and happenings, some sad, some joyous, which fill the pages of this enchanting and wonderfully enjoyable book. Readers of any or all of Jane Duncan's 'Friends' novels will rejoice particularly in My Friends George and Tom, for the wise and funny characters of the title have played important supporting parts in many of the earlier books and finally have a book which is triumphantly their own.

About the Author

Born in Scotland in 1910, Jane Duncan spent her childhood in Glasgow, going for holidays to the Black Isle of Inverness. After taking her degree at Glasgow University she moved to England in 1931, and when war broke out she was commissioned in the WAAF and worked in Photographic Intelligence. After the war she moved to the West Indies with her husband, who appears as 'Twice' Alexander in her novels. Shortly after he husband's death, she returned to Jemimaville near Cromarty, not far from her grandparents' croft which inspired the beloved 'Reachfar'. Jane Duncan died in 1976.