She's Leaving Home

Years later, when Martha is asked how the sixties got going, she remembers this moment, waiting in the foyer. The cheerful bulk of Josie fitting tightly inside the box office booth; Frankie, all quiffed black hair, doling out viciously bright sweets . . . But the times they are a-changing. And while her father, the projectionist at the Grande cinema, cloaks himself in Hollywood fantasies, and her mother mourns her lost youth, Martha is determined that she will not waste herself on dreams. She has her own life to live. Martha is leaving home. Brilliantly capturing the longing for freedom and change, She's Leaving Home is about the madness, the intensity and the passion that made the sixties an iconic decade. 'Plenty of wry humour. . . once Martha reaches Liverpool, she finds her horizons broadened by such heady delights as poetry readings, CND protests, sex and Earl Grey tea' Amber Pearson, Daily Mail'Bakewell conjures up Liverpool in the early Sixties, sensitively portraying an era on the cusp between post-war privation and Sixties hedonism . . captures both the intense self-absorption of the young and the disappointments of middle age . . . very readable and perceptive' Vanessa Berridge, Daily ExpressJpeg of All the Nice Girls