“Old Baggage” is a lovely, poignant story about a few ageing suffragettes and the legacy of their cause. It focuses on fictional characters but it is clearly based in truth and very well researched. It is witty, gut wrenchingly sad and you really feel for the characters. My only criticism would be that the end felt a little rushed and I would’ve liked to know a bit more about what had happened to one of the characters featured in the final pages.

While the book shows how hard these women fought for the rights they gained, it showed how much there still was to do, even once all women were granted the right 5o vote, and how much we still have to do today,

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book.

Mattie is obviously a very determined woman who is not to be messed with. Bored one day she finds an old wooden club she had relegated to the back of a cupboard and that sets her off again but can she see her latest idea through.

I have read and reviewed this book via my Goodreads and YouTube. I appreciate the opportunity to read and review this title

Mattie Simpkins feels at a loss. It's 1928 and now middle-aged, Mattie years for her youth when she joined the suffragette movement to fight for the right to vote. Mattie misses the camaraderie of her fellow fighters, as well as the found family aspect of the cause, while also afraid that the young generation of women aren't prepared to fight for what they should have. Mattie ends up setting up a group for young women to teach them survival skills that include camping, javelin throwing and the occasional fire starting, and ends up learning more about herself.

I listened to this book on audiobook narrated by Joanna Scanlan, and I highly recommend this method of reading this book as Joanna just impersonated the character of Mattie so so well, and if there was ever to be a movie made of this book, she is the only person who could play Mattie.

I really enjoyed this book, and while some of that was because of the excellent audiobook, I also enjoyed the story a lot - a look at what happens following an extreme bout of activism, and what happens when you've won or not quite won, but everyone goes back to normal and you're left still striving for more change? It reminded me of some conversations I've read in Repealed, about the women who fought for years for abortion rights in Ireland and how when the Eight was repealed, how empty some people felt afterwards and how easily others forgot that there was more to be done.

Mattie is the type of character that just steamrolls off the page and into your life, and I feel like I need a bit of Mattie in my every day life to keep me motivated and striving for success. She' a great motivational speaker, and so much belief in her convictions. I also loved the tender yet fragile relationship she had with the Flea, and some of the discourse surrounding their relationship and Mattie's reactions to people thinking it more than friendship.

I also loved Ida and her storyline, and that firm line of privilege. It's easy to forget that Mattie in particular was born into a life of privilege which allowed her to make choices and use her time as a Suffragette rather than being a woman forced to work to put food on the table/or stay at home with a multitude of children and not able to protest or even have that brain space or energy. Mattie also ends up a woman with property allowing her that vote, while women like The Flea don't get it for a long time. Ida is very different to the other girls in The Amazons, yet the end proved with Mattie's help she was able to step up and achieve something many only dream of.

I think the end of the book was a little bit weak, and felt a tad rushed and I would have liked more time with Mattie and the Flea at the end. The epilogue was very sweet (at first it annoyed me what happened to Ida but I was glad the story went the unconventional route with her refusing to give up what she had gotten through hard work).

I enjoyed The Crooked Heart which featured Mattie the former Suffrage in the 1940s. Old Baggage is a prequel set in the 1920s and has more Mattie and less of other distractions.
It is even better.
Mattie isn't a sweet old dear, she is concentrated brain power and when sufferage is achieved finds herself without a role where she can be productive. She might be he'll to live with but she is never Intentionally unkind and just can't stop herself taking action, it's just that the consequences are not always what she hopes to achieve.
The Flea is her silent support and prop and shuns the limelight but Mattie couldn't act as she does without such a loyal support act
Apart from such vivid characters the historical detail is fascinating. The vote was won, but not without bad feeling on the part of those divided over how to act when war is declared, and there is no improvement in rights for women like the Flea.
Touches like Jeyes fluid and impetigo set off this enthralling story that is peppered with observations about about nature in very descriptive passages.
I really recommend this book to existing
I enjoyed The Crooked Heart which featured Mattie the former Suffrage in the 1940s. Old Baggage is a prequel set in the 1920s and has more Mattie and less of other distractions.
It is even better.
Mattie isn't a sweet old dear, she is concentrated brain power and when sufferage is achieved finds herself without a role where she can be productive. She might be he'll to live with but she is never Intentionally unkind and just can't stop herself taking action, it's just that the consequences are not always what she hopes to achieve.
The Flea is her silent support and prop and shuns the limelight but Mattie couldn't act as she does without such a loyal support act
Apart from such vivid characters the historical detail is fascinating. The vote was won, but not without bad feeling on the part of those divided over how to act when war is declared, and there is no improvement in rights for women like the Flea.
Touches like Jeyes fluid and impetigo set off this enthralling story that is peppered with observations about about nature in very descriptive passages.
I really recommend this book to existing fans and newcomers alike
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When I started reading this book I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy it. It seemed like a slow starter and Mattie just that bit too eccentric and erratic. However the beautiful writing and exquisite story telling gathers you in completely. In the end I read the whole trilogy and they were my top three books of the year. Highly recommended.

A delightful read. It highlights the suffering of women who were committed to equal rights and votes for women while not preaching, it tells the tale in a heart warming way, reflecting a bye gone era of inequality for women on every level. a book all young women should read to enable them to understand what women of the past had to suffer.

In my role as English Teacher, I love being able to spend time reviewing books for our school library which I use to help the students make great picks when they visit us as well as running a library junior and senior book group where we meet every week and share the books we love and talk about what makes a great read. This is certainly a book that I'd be happy to display at the front as one of my monthly 'top picks' which often transform into 'most borrowed' between students and staff. It's a great read and ties in with my ethos of wishing to assemble a diverse, modern and thought-provoking range of books that will inspire and deepen a love of reading in our students of all ages. This book answers this brief in spade! It has s fresh and original voice and asks the readers to think whilst hooking them with a compelling storyline and strong characters It is certainly a book that I've thought about a lot after finishing it and I've also considered how we could use some of its paragraphs in supporting and inspiring creative writing in the school through the writers' circle that we run. This is a book that I shall certainly recommend we purchase and look forward to hearing how much the staff and students enjoy this memorable and thought-provoking read.

Despite only making fleeting appearances in the opening pages of Lissa Evans' previous book Crooked Heart, erstwhile suffragette Mattie Simpkin stole the show rather effortlessly. It is little surprise to see that she has elbowed her way into a starring role. Set approximately ten years before the events of the other novel, the reader finally gets to see Mattie 'in person'. For those looking for a comfort read in these tricky times, your search may cease. Behold Old Baggage, champion of the oppressed and crusader for justice. May we all channel her spirit as we move into the days ahead!

The most obvious choice would have been to set a novel around Mattie in her prime fighting days, throwing stones and staging hunger strikes. However Evans is far more subtle, so that the reader meets Mattie in late middle age. Still giving speeches and presentations on the suffragette cause, Mattie remains a 'one woman batallion' determined to encourage the next generation to overcome the barricades which still stand in the way of parity for womankind. As the novel opens, she has her bag snatched while walking through the park. She gives chase and throws a bottle at her assailant, having to make her excuses to a police officer since the missile goes somewhat wide of its intended target.

There are few characters that I am ever able to visualise quite so vividly as Mattie Simpkin; I think Helena Bonham Carter would be perfect in a screen adaptation. Mattie is such a spectacularly well-realised creation and a big part of that is due to Evans' choice to write her as a woman in her late fifties. It would have been so easy to stage a story around a twenty year-old suffragette in the blaze of the fight - she would have been brave, bold and would have rolled her eyes at any man who tried to catch her eye. Nothing to distinguish her from any other run-of-the-mill heroine. Instead we have a character full of complexity and contradiction, deeply principled but also utterly inflexible. She has a powerful sense of right and wrong but will have no truck with the criminal justice system. She is charismatic and witty but lacks any form of tact. She wants to save the world but wins herself very few friends as she goes about it. Mattie may be a fighter but she has no idea how to live peacefully.

Old Baggage is also a very timely novel, released around the centenary of women gaining the right to vote. Here again though, Evans has made another interesting choice. In choosing to set her novel in 1928, the year in which the franchise was extended to women in parity with men (right to vote for those aged 21, regardless of whether they owned property), she highlights the limitations of the 1918 Act. Mattie points out furiously that her friend and lodger the Flea has never voted, 'Forty-nine years old, a qualified sanitary Inspector, a scrupulous taxpayer, and yet still, by dint of her lacking a property qualification, denied the most basic right of the citizen. Doesn’t that make you absolutely boil with the injustice?'

As Mattie gives her lectures (with the Flea scurrying about sorting out the slides), the reader is given a whistle-stop tour of the militant suffragette movement. Again, a timely choice; it has become fashionable to disparage the suffragettes in favour of the suffragists, to declare that the militant movement slowed down the process for women to receive the vote. Through Mattie, Evans defends their legacy with clear passion - she has done a formidable amount of research. Yet all of this makes the novel sounds didactic and it never feels that way. In interviews, Evans described how she was trying to capture the experience of someone who had lived through something remarkable and then had to work out what to do afterwards. Mattie was jailed five times, she staged hunger strikes, she smashed windows and she heckled Winston Churchill. With the camaraderie now at a close, can anything else ever come close?

A chance encounter with a former suffragette acquaintance leaves Mattie horrified at the notion that she has been treading water all these years. Determined to make some ground, she sets up 'the Amazons', a group for young girls involving healthy activities and skills such as javelin 'and the use of the slingshot'. They build campfires, sing songs and as a reader I only felt sorry that I could not join in too. One of the first recruits is young Ida, employed as daily help to Mattie and the Flea. With the Flea encouraging her to attend continuation school and Mattie exhorting her to be the best she can be, Ida's aunt notes that she is coming home looking 'a foot taller'. Mattie has been worrying over how little the new generation care about the sacrifices and hardships that the suffragettes undergone but Ida just may be proof that there is still hope out there. It's too bad then that Mattie gets her head turned when Inez joins the group. Inez may be pallid, dull and lacking any form of enthusiasm but she is the offspring of a late suffragette and one of the few men who Mattie ever thought worth knowing.

Evans does such a fantastic job of illustrating the folly of forgetting intersectionality in feminism. We always needed more than just the vote. Ida's aunt expresses surprise when she meets the Flea and recognises a woman who has always had to work for a living. The Flea feels automatically defensive on Mattie's behalf, claiming that much has been achieved by women who never strictly had to work. But the point is there. Mattie's black and white views fail to take in the struggles of others and they are a product of her privilege. Yet she keeps on trying. There is a moment when it seems like she may be tempted to join Jacko, an old suffragette friend who has embraced the rising Fascist trend, but you realise that Mattie is never going to really fall for that failure of compassion. There is something so very tender in how big-hearted she can be. She admits when she is wrong. She apologises. Just as she never gives up the fight, she is utterly loyal to her friends.

Rereading Old Baggage has made me feel quite reflective. The title is a reference to a jibe levelled at Mattie by a boy who sees her with her pack of Amazons. But it is also a reference to the more metaphorical luggage that we all carry with us. The weight of the cares, the loves and the losses that mark our lives. Mattie has mourned her brothers, refused to let go of the suffragette cause and taken for granted those who love her best. She feels defensive and uncomfortable when Jacko comments with heavy meaning that the Flea looks after Mattie so well. There is such emotional truth in her later realisation that the most appropriate response should have been 'Yes, and I'm so lucky'. We can all look at our lives, no matter what stage we are at, and see that we are missing this or that but when we fall into this trap, we miss out on so much. Let go of the old baggage and hug close the gifts that we have been given.

There is so very much that I love about Old Baggage but perhaps its over-arching charm is that it is such a female-centric novel. The men have walk-on parts at best. It isn't that there are no men of significance but pretty much all they ever do takes place off-stage. The characters who matter are the females. I am still a few decades younger than them but I also really love how Old Baggage embraces what it means to be a middle-aged woman, a figure much under-represented in fiction. I can imagine that Mattie would be delighted to think of herself as a trailblazer, showing that women really do have engaging stories beyond the marriage plot. It isn't even that Evans paints all women as heroic; Ida's mother is a simpering witch and then Jacko is such a brightly burnished bitch, some of them are tragic, some of them brave and some of them vapid - but every single character within the supporting cast actually does seem like a believable female.

The book's heart though is Mattie and the Flea. The pair of them are a perfect double act. It is so rare to read in fiction of a friendship being recognised as one of the defining relationships of someone's life and for its rewards to be truly appreciated. The Flea is another fantastic character; while Mattie's speeches may be remembered, I feel like the Flea is an example of the character quietly championed by George Eliot in the closing pages of Middlemarch: 'For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.' The Flea is Mattie's shield-bearer; she sorts out Mattie's slides, cooks Mattie's food, apologises for Mattie when she goes too far. Remembering that the Flea does not feature within Crooked Heart, I felt a huge twinge of pre-emptive sadness about the impending parting of the ways.

As an interesting echo, Mattie makes reference to Middlemarch early in the novel as a gift given to her during childhood by an understanding governess. Said governess is referenced by her as but one of a horde of nameless women reduced to servitude by the patriarchy, one of the inspirations for Mattie to take up the suffragette cause. Mattie may state firmly that she was never meant to be a character like Dorothea Brooke but I feel that the book in which she resides is a thematically similar one. Old Baggage is a book so full of love and respect for these forgotten champions. In our final glimpse of Mattie, we see how her story dovetails into that of Heart not because she is lonely but because she thinks of what the Flea would tell her to do and then she does it. Your baggage cannot get in the way of your integrity. Old Baggage is a novel so full of grace for human frailty, rich in wit and warmth of heart - if you are looking for a novel to power you through the weeks ahead, look no further.

Beautiful tale of love and friendship and regret - showing how memories can be difficult to let go of. Highly recommended

A delightful novel about a feisty woman, set in London in 1928.
Matilda Simpkin was a militantsuffragette back in the day, immersing herself in the fight for womens' suffrage. Protest marches, hunger strikes, she's done it all for The Cause. But what does she do with herself now that women have the vote? Matilda is without purpose (she has no need to work! :D ). Some of her former comrades have turned to left or right wing politics. Matilda decides to throw herself into encouraging girls and young women to be more active and to think more critically. Then life throws a bit of a curve-ball at poor Matilda and things go awry.
Matilda is ferociously intelligent, passionate about her causes and is a real force of nature. She reminded me of some of my ancient aunts from my childhood, most unmarried from the WW1 generation, and the speech and sense of place was spot on - I was right there in inter-war London! Highly recommended.

This book was so charming and uplifting! I have never thought about the immediate aftermath of the suffragettes, and I'm glad that that window has now been opened up. I thought the book ended abruptly, but otherwise a very enjoyable read.

Old Baggage is a sharp and masterful evocation of the early-20th Century; of the middling, oft-overlooked pre- and post- World War years whose events seem to have little consequence, especially when initially compared to the seemingly more interesting periods that surround them. After-all, the banal and boredom that arises when all the action and activity has finally ceased, is Old Baggage’s central, sobering theme.
“What do you do next, after you’ve changed the world?” it asks. And, at least, in the mind of central protagonist Mattie, the answer to the question has seemed to have always been out of reach.
It is an interesting and thought-provoking question, what happened after - when all the action was over and the cause was reached; when the sashes and the ribbons were finally put away; when the suffragettes disbanded and the monotony of real life resumed.
Could it be resumed? Normal life, that is. I do not think that I would have been able to go back and I imagine that many of the women must have felt the same.
It is like Harry Potter and the gang (tired reference, I know, but I am tired and it is the best that I can do on short notice) getting married and settling down and, the whole chaos of their entire teenage years being put away in little boxes and seemingly forgotten.
I didn’t buy it in fiction and, I would have bought it even less if it actually had happened.
Instead, there is a listlessness; an endless searching for something to put your name and mind towards. And, sure, for many of the women that might have been child-rearing, or continuing in smaller numbers to spread the messages of the suffragettes; but equally, and far more worryingly, it might have been invested in the rising cult of fascism.
Anything, it seems, that whiles away the innumerable hours.

Loved this. Characters full of mischief and life. A low-key plot that nevertheless packs a punch because you become so embroiled in the characters' inner lives. Language that perfectly reflects the period. Not a hair out of place. This is my second Lissa Evans and she's going on my favourites list.

If you’re looking at this review, but have yet to read Lissa Evans’ novel Crooked Heart, then I recommend you buy it and read it immediately. Old Baggage is a prequel to that excellent novel, and it provides much more background to a beloved character from Crooked Heart – Noel’s godmother Mattie.

This book fills an interesting gap in what we think of when we think of the Sufragettes – the time after the vote had been won. Those women founght long and hard and with no thought for their personl comfort and safety to win the vote for women, but after being so militant and so alive during that time, how did they slot back into their lives afterwards? Did they just fade back into the kitchen?

The inter-war period is often shown as just being The Great Gatsby, then the Great Depression, but it’s a fascinating period when the role of women, forever changed by the suffrage movement, began an evolution that was accelerated by the Second World War, and is still going on today.

Mattie fills her time lecturing on the fight for the vote, showing endless slides to groups of bored women, until a chance meeting leads her to start a group for young ladies in an attempt to counter the growth of fascist organisations – especially that of an old comrade. Although things go awry for her, Mattie keeps her can-do attitude and an optimistic view of things as best she can.

In Crooked Heart, Mattie is mentioned sparingly, as she unfortunately develops dementia, but even through the depiction of her as an elderly lady, the Mattie from Old Baggage is still there – a no-nonsense woman of bravery and spirit who wants to do good in the world. As a character, she is just wonderful.

Both books are heartwarming to read. The writing is very funny, but in a wry and knowing way and there is a lot to think about once you’ve read Old Baggage in particular. I guess it strikes a chord with me, dealing as it does with the place of older women in society. This is something I think about a lot and it’s compelling to watch Mattie try to start again in establishing herself after such an action-packed early life.

As you can imagine, both Crooked Heart and Old Baggage are highly recommended by me and I’d recommend reading both side by side to properly appreciate Mattie as the one-of-a-kind she is.

Mattie Simpkin is an ageing suffragette who is still trying to win the right for full female enfranchisement (only propertied women over 30 could vote at that point). She realises that she needs to make a difference to younger women, to empower them and so starts a group for 12-18 year-old girls. They learn, they become physically and mentally stronger, and become more independent. But Mattie's progress is threatened by the arrival of someone with a connection to her past.

Mattie is a tremendous character, bold and brash and unafraid of what anyone else thinks. Her best friend and lodger, know as The Flea, is very different but still quite wonderful. This is quite a charming book and filled with brilliant characters you want to keep reading about.

I really enjoyed this book. It was a fascinating look at what happens when you've been fighting so hard for something, in this case the fight for the vote for women, and then you've got it. The main character Mattie is such an interesting woman, I really warmed to her and her story as she fights to find her place in the world again.

This novel goes a long way to answering the question, "What happens to the fighters when the fight has been won?" The fighter, in this case, is Mattie, who is trying to figure out what to do with herself as a retired suffragette. I very much enjoyed this novel; it is charming, it is witty, it is touching. Highly recommended, especially for people interested in suffragettes or historical novels. The fact that I laughed out loud a few times was a bonus, too.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Black Swan for a review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Old Baggage is a brilliant tale of former suffragettes in the late 1920s reliving their fight for emancipation whilst passing on their knowledge to the younger generation. A strong sense of time and place, finely written characters makes this novel an unforgettable read.

What a fabulous book. The older generation pushing the younger generation to go for what they want. The ending is rather cute, but I will say the thrusting between the years at the ending did confuse me a little. Overall a good read :)