One Afternoon

Siân James’s novel One Afternoon, is a comfortable, easy read. But this is where the intelligence comes in: the writing is phenomenal – perceptive and clever, marvellous about children, and path-breaking (when the heroine’s lover leaves her and she is pregnant, she has no qualms about bringing up a new baby as well as the three children she already has by her first husband). 

As Susan Hill wrote in The Times in 1975: ‘One Afternoon is... a quiet, gentle book, full of insight and truth... It is about passion, but not simply that; about the many varieties and degrees of human love, filial, maternal, spiritual, sexual, friendly. It is, above all, about that pre-eminently difficult achievement, self-love. I learnt a great deal from this lovingly created, carefully worked-out book, and greatly admired the control, elegance and occasional moments of real beauty of Siân James’s prose. The two last, short paragraphs moved me to tears.’

Endpaper

'Kazak', a Collier Campbell furnishing fabric designed for Liberty by Sarah Campbell and her sister Susan Collier in 1973 and manufactured in 1977. An armchair covered in 'Kazak' is sometimes in the window of the Persephone Books shop.