A great many writers use their own lives as the raw material for their work but few have done it with the wit and courage of Simon Gray. Like his previous best-seller, The Smoking Diaries, The Year of the Jouncer has the rare ability to make you laugh aloud one moment and ponder the sad mysteries of mortality the next, and sometimes to do both at the same time.
The third novel in Annie Murray's "Birmingham" series. While Genie's father is away fighting in World War II, her mother has a ruinous affair which leaves her pregnant; Genie's little brother leaves, never to return; while Genie herself meets a man who then disappears to war.
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