When I First Held You, Anstey Harris
When I First Held You, Anstey Harris
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When I First Held You

Author: Anstey Harris

Narrator: Billie Fulford-Brown, Helen Lloyd

Unabridged: 9 hr 20 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/24/2023

Synopsis

Silence tore them apart. Can the truth bring them back together?"Marvellous” —Lesley Pearse"A hauntingly beautiful novel" —Imogen Clark"Gripping, heart rending and extremely satisfying” —Katie FfordeIn 1960s Glasgow, anti-nuclear activists Judith and Jimmy fall in love. But their future hopes are dashed when their protestors’ squat is raided and many, including Jimmy, are sent to prison. Pregnant and with no word from Jimmy, Judith is forced to enter an unmarried mothers’ home, give up their baby and learn to live with her grief.More than half a century later, Judith’s Mending Shop restores broken treasures, just as Judith herself has been bound back together by her late, much-missed partner, Catherine. But her tranquillity is shattered when Jimmy—so different and yet somehow the same—reappears, yearning to unpick the painful past.Realising they each know only half of the other’s story, Jimmy and Judith finally break the silence that tore apart what might have been their family. Amid heartbreak and hope, how much can now be mended?

About Anstey Harris

Anstey Harris was born in an unmarried mothers’ home in Liverpool in 1965. Now a mother and stepmother herself, she lives in Scotland where she runs a writing retreat. She has been inspired by her family history, and hopes to give a voice to the women and children—16,000 a year during the 1960s in the UK—separated from each other by forced adoptions.Anstey won the H. G. Wells Short Story Award in 2015 and her debut novel, The Truths and Triumphs of Grace Atherton, a Richard and Judy Book Club choice, won the Sapere Books RNA Popular Romantic Fiction Award in 2020. Her second novel, Where We Belong, was shortlisted for the RNA Book of the Year Award 2021 and she numbers Libby Page, Katie Fforde and Beth O’Leary among her many fans.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Ceecee on July 18, 2022

4-5 stars Jimmy and Judith re-meet fifty years on via Judith’s ‘Mending Shop’ which fixes broken treasures. In Glasgow of the 1960s they first meet as antinuclear protesters and fall in love. Unfortunately, the story is to be no fairytale and Judith especially still carries the burden from those day......more

Goodreads review by Theresa on January 08, 2023

The latest novel from Anstey Harris is a deeply personal one, so it’s better if I start this review with a quote from the very end of the novel, from the author note, for context: ‘I wrote Judith and Penny’s story to give me – and the half a million like me – a voice, and to remind those of you who h......more

Goodreads review by Brittany on December 18, 2022

Thanks to NetGalley & Lake Union Publishing for an eARC of this book. The following review is my honest reflection on the text provided. 4.5 stars Above all else, the word that When I First Held You most brings to mind is honesty. The stories these characters have to tell resonate with heartbreaking t......more

Goodreads review by Anne on January 19, 2023

A beautifully written story with a dual time-line reaching back to the 1960s in Glasgow when Judith and Jimmy meet and fall in love and then taking the reader fifty years on as Judith works in her Mending Shop. Judith and Jimmy were anti-nuclear protestors in the 60s. Living a squalid squat but very......more

Goodreads review by Laura on July 04, 2022

This is the first novel I'd read by Anstey Harris and the blurb intrigued me. The novel is a dual timeline/split narrative between the characters in the present day and back in the 1960s Scotland, where the protagonists meet protesting nuclear arms at Faslane. Also what is unusual is that the main cha......more

Quotes

“[Billie] Fulford-Brown skillfully communicates Ruby’s fear of the unknown and her mixed feelings—guilt, excitement, and wariness—as she seeks out her biological relatives. Helen Lloyd gives voice to Judith, conveying her confusion about her sexuality and her wrenching grief at losing her child. The pacing is leisurely, allowing listeners time to become fully invested in the characters’ stories.” —Library Journal“This profound story of loss delivers an emotional gut punch but also displays human resilience. Recommended for fans of Jodi Picoult.” —Library Journal (starred review)“It is brilliantly written, so many brilliant phrases which made me smile…I shall keep my fingers crossed that it is a huge hit. It ought to be, it’s marvellous. I shall be recommending it to all.” —Lesley Pearse, #1 bestselling author of The Woman in the Woodry, made me think.” —Frances Quinn, author of The Bonesetter Woman

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