The Whalebone Theatre

I fell in love with the three-year-old Cristabel Seagrove from the first page. I laughed with her, cried with her, and spent many years with her as she navigated her way into adulthood in the company of her equally engaging siblings.

The characters who inhabit their Dorset stately home before and during the Second World War are both engaging and infuriating. It’s an absolute gem of a book. 

Just when I thought fiction about World War II had grown stale, I came across Joanna Quinn’s marvelous historical novel.

It opens on a family estate in the English countryside in the aftermath of World War I. The three finely drawn main characters—precocious, determined half-siblings—are basically raising themselves. They share a love of literature and spend their time putting on plays for their friends, family, and neighbors.

As they grow into young adulthood, they are confronted with the brutality of World War II, and each makes a choice about how to help their country.

Quinn deploys lush language to create… show more.

This is a beautifully told story of a highly imaginative and creative child who, left to her own devises, makes a world for herself and siblings to escape the neglect of the self-indulgent adults who have little interest in raising them.

Cristabel Seagrave is courageous, fiercely loyal, and protective. She sees the magic in the environment and people around her and when she makes a theatre from the whalebones she claims as hers, she brings that world to life for others. The book reaffirmed for me the exquisite nature of childhood imagination and the resilience of the human spirit.