Stone Cradle (34 page)
T
hank you to Sharon Floate and all at the Romany & Travellers’ Family History Society. Many of the RTFHS’s publications were extremely useful, those by Robert Dawson in particular. Thanks also to Gordon and Margaret Boswell of the Romany Museum, Spalding. Thanks to the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada (again) and to Jerome Weatherald (again). Thanks in particular to Thomas Acton, Jill Dawson, Jane Hodges and Jacqui Lofthouse for support and advice, to Suzanne Baboneau and Rochelle Venables, and to my agent Antony Harwood. I am indebted to Kevin Smullin Brown for the title and Toby the Sapient Pig for the poem.
The characters in this novel are invented but many of the incidents that occur are drawn from the memories and recollections of real-life sources, some of whom prefer to remain anonymous. My debt to them is immeasurable.
Paracrow tutis, my Petulengros, all Petulengros and jinimengro pals everywhere.
The few words of Rummanus, or English Romanes, that I use in this book are drawn from a variety of personal and written sources. Where these did not agree, I favoured the personal as I interpreted it, thus any inaccuracies are entirely my responsibility. The only word which readers need to understand is
gorjer
, a pejorative for non-Romanies.
Louise Doughty is the author of seven novels, most recently
Apple Tree Yard
, which was a top ten bestseller, shortlisted for a Specsavers Book Award, chosen for the Richard & Judy Book Club and published in twenty-two countries around the world. Her previous novel,
Whatever You Love
, was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. She has won awards for radio drama and short stories, along with publishing one work of non-fiction,
A Novel in a Year
, based on her hugely popular newspaper column. She is a critic and cultural commentator for UK and international newspapers and broadcasts regularly for the BBC. She lives in London.
fiction
Apple Tree Yard
Whatever You Love
Fires in the Dark
Honey-Dew
Dance with Me
Crazy Paving
non-fiction
A Novel in a Year
First published in Great Britain in 2003
by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
First Floor, 222 Gray’s Inn Rd
London WC1X 8HB
This ebook edition first published in 2014
by Faber & Faber Ltd.,
Bloomsbury House, 74–77 Great Russell Street
London, WC1B 3DA
All rights reserved
© Louise Doughty, 2003
Cover design by Faber
The right of Louise Doughty to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–31583–3
Also by Louise Doughty
Yvonne Carmichael has a high-flying career, a beautiful home and a good marriage. But when she meets a stranger she is drawn into a passionate affair. Keeping the two halves of her life separate seems easy at first. But she can’t control what happens next.
‘There can’t be a woman alive who hasn’t once realised, in a moment of panic, that she’s in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong man. Louise Doughty, more sure-footed with each novel, leads her unnerved reader into dark territory. A compelling and bravely written book.’ Hilary Mantel
‘Doughty is a superb storyteller who knows how to build suspense to breaking point.’ Kate Saunders,
The Times
‘Doughty has a particular gift for unsettling stories, for making us ask difficult questions of ourselves, our own relationship choices, and this is her strongest book yet … entirely compelling.’
Observer
Laura’s nine-year-old daughter Betty is killed in a hit-and run accident. Her life is turned upside down, and her grief unearths buried memories of her painful divorce from Betty’s father David. When the death is ruled an accident, Laura takes revenge into her own hands, with devastating consequences.
‘A brilliant and brutal novel that continues to unsettle long after the final page has been turned.’
Observer
‘Novels about love and loss are ten-a-penny, but this one brilliantly defies expectations to the very last page … terrifically compelling.’
Daily Mail
‘Like Zoë Heller, Doughty is masterful at combining the texture of ordinary, smugly middle-class, contemporary life with the hidden cliff edges of violence and hatred.’
Sunday Telegraph
From the bestselling author of
Apple Tree Yard
, this award-winning novel is the epic story of a Roma boy trying to survive in Czechoslovakia during the Second World War.
Yenko is born in 1920s Bohemia to a nomadic Roma family who try to protect him from the hardships imposed on his people. But his childhood world is soon overwhelmed by the Great Depression and the German invasion. Yenko and his parents become fugitives from the Nazis, and ultimately Yenko must decide who and what is worth saving.
Louise Doughty – drawing on her own Romany family history – has written a breathtaking novel of grand scope which also sheds new light on the Holocaust and its Roma victims.
‘An epic novel … absorbing, shocking, hopeful.’
Mail on Sunday
‘Compulsively readable … its triumph is the quiet authority of its telling, an unblinking serenity of gaze.’
Guardian
‘Memorable and gripping. I have seldom before read sentences that evoke so well the beauty of the landscape or the pain and hunger of cold.’
New Statesman
‘The compelling story sweeps you along from the beginning to the end. Doughty writes with a deep knowledge of her subject.’
Daily Mail
‘A novel such as this has the emotive power to restore dignity to those who were so appallingly robbed of it … It delivers inner truth in a knock-out blow, as only art can.’
Independent
‘Compelling. Assumptions and inhibitions bind each of us all too tightly into our own world, but fiction can release us into another.
Fires in the Dark
does just this.’
The Times
‘A big, original book with a fascinating perspective on these other Europeans.’
Observer
‘Without patronising her characters, Doughty builds up a sympathetic momentum which causes the horrors of the Holocaust to crash over the reader in a bitterly personal way.’
Time Out
‘One would be hard-pressed to find a book in any genre so expansive and capacious detailing the Roma, or Gypsy, experience during the Second World War as
Fires in the Dark
. The book, a blend of historical detail and finely tuned fiction, adds to the knowledge about this precarious but rich culture and people.’
Jerusalem Post
‘Both a topical and important book. Combining a compelling human story with a necessary historical lesson, Doughty’s fourth novel is her best by far and nothing less than an essential read.’
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