The Colour of Milk - by Nell Leyshon (Paperback)

About the Book

The Colour of Milk is a literary tour de force of power, class, and fate, told in the fierce, urgent voice of the irrepressible Mary, a character as indelible as The Color Purple's Celie and Margaret Atwood's eponymous Alias Grace.

Set in England in 1830, The Colour of Milk by Nell Leyshon is an emotionally haunting work of historical fiction -- hailed as "charming, Bronte-esque...and hard to forget" (Marian Keyes) -- about an illiterate farm girl's emotional and intellectual awakening and its devastating consequences.

Mary, the spirited youngest daughter of an angry, violent man, is sent to work for the local vicar and his invalid wife. Her strange new surroundings offer unsettling challenges, including the vicar's lecherous son and a manipulative fellow servant. But life in the vicarage also offers unexpected joys, as the curious young girl learns to read and write -- knowledge that will come at a tragic price.

Book Synopsis

The Colour of Milk is a literary tour de force of power, class, and fate, told in the fierce, urgent voice of the irrepressible Mary, a character as indelible as The Color Purple's Celie and Margaret Atwood's eponymous Alias Grace.

Set in England in 1830, The Colour of Milk by Nell Leyshon is an emotionally haunting work of historical fiction -- hailed as "charming, Brontë-esque...and hard to forget" (Marian Keyes) -- about an illiterate farm girl's emotional and intellectual awakening and its devastating consequences.

Mary, the spirited youngest daughter of an angry, violent man, is sent to work for the local vicar and his invalid wife. Her strange new surroundings offer unsettling challenges, including the vicar's lecherous son and a manipulative fellow servant. But life in the vicarage also offers unexpected joys, as the curious young girl learns to read and write -- knowledge that will come at a tragic price.

From the Back Cover

Mary and her three sisters rise every day to backbreaking farm work that threatens to suppress their own awakening desires, whether it's Violet's pull toward womanhood or Beatrice's affinity for the Scriptures. But it's their father, whose anger is unleashed at the slightest provocation, who stands to deliver the most harm. Only Mary, fierce of tongue and a spitfire since birth, dares to stand up to him. When he sends her to work for the local vicar and his invalid wife in their house on the hill, he deals her the only blow she may not survive.

Within walking distance of her own family farm, the vicarage is a world away-a curious, unsettling place unlike any she has known. Teeming with the sexuality of the vicar's young son and the manipulations of another servant, it is also a place of books and learning-a source of endless joy. Yet as young Mary soon discovers, such precious knowledge comes with a devastating price as it is made gradually clear once she begins the task of telling her own story.

Reminiscent of Alias Grace in the exploration of the power dynamics between servants and those they serve and The Color Purple's Celie, The Colour of Milk is a quietly devastating tour de force that reminds us that knowledge can destroy even as it empowers.

Review Quotes

"It is once in a blue moon that an author creates a voice quite as alive and as startling as Mary's. Nell Leyshon deserves to be showered with awards for The Colour Of Milk." - Sunday Express (London)
"Leyshon is a master of domestic suspense. . . . Slender but compelling, the charm of Leyshon's novella is to be found as much in its spare, evocative style as in the moving candour of its narrator." - The Observer (UK)
"Beautifully crafted. . . . Compelling. . . . Like a love letter to the power of words." - Marie Claire (UK)
"Bronte-esque undertones, from nods to Charlotte's sexual politics to Emily's rural imagery." - Financial Times
"At once lyric and brutal. . . . Readers of historical and women's fiction should investigate."- - Library Journal
"Resonant, heartbreaking. . . . The Colour of Milk is a truly wonderful read--a slender, beautiful novel with as much heart as a book twice its size." - San Francisco Chronicle
"The unflinching, observant, and thoroughly persuasive voice of the narrator, a shrewd, illiterate farm girl, makes this slim novel striking." - The Atlantic
"The ending will surprise you. . . . A must-read." - Glamour (UK)
"Haunting, distinctive voices. . . . Mary's spare simple words paint brilliant pictures in the reader's mind of a hundred different experiences. . . Leyshon's imaginative powers are considerable." - The Independent on Sunday
"Nell Leyshon has beautifully captured a voice that haunts, long after the last word has been read. Brava!" - Kathleen Grissom, New York Times bestselling author of The Kitchen House
"A wonderfully convincing voice and a devastating story told with great skill & economy. . . . A small tour de force" - Marian Keyes, bestselling author of Angels and Anybody Out There?
"Compelling. . . . Leyshon brings her narrator brilliantly to life. . . . Mary draws the reader in from the opening pages. Here is a headstrong, forthright, optimistic character determined to survive her wretched circumstances in a literary jewel crafted by an accomplished writer." - Booklist
"A wonderfully convincing voice and a devastating story told with great skill & economy. . . . A small tour de force" - Penelope Lively, award-winning author of Family Album and Moon Tiger