Foxash by Kate Worsley and Narrated by Alix Dunmore was a book that was written from the authors heart. It was beautifully written and just took my breath away, This book, Foxash was set in the 1930's in England. which was a time of hardship and life without an NHS or private healthcare etc, where illness is treated with home remedies made up from old fashion remedies and herbs from you garden or forest etc. There were no fancy medicines like we have today.....Everything was nature.....You got better or you died..........God, and the church was always there in the back ground to make people better.

Foxash was a slow burner But, I just loved listening to the narrator Alix Dunmore, she bought the book alive with her superb- accents authentic which was not overbearing. This audiobook kept me guessing while immersing you in the harsh but bountiful lives of the characters.

I can't recommend enough it was just beautiful!

Big Thank you to Netgalley and Headline for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

typical life in poor farming community, the church combined myths & folklore appear to keep everyone from straying off course. It's an existence rather than a life although with bursts of goodwill and happiness you can see why letty settles in and feels safe. Then life deals a cruel blow and letty starts to question everything that gave her security. Not quite what i thought it would be by the description but pleasantly surprised. Thank you #NetGalley for the audiobook to review.

****This Review Contains Spoilers*****

This was a fantastic audiobook! The narration was brilliant with clear distinction between the characters.
I’ve never read a Kate Worsley before and this certainly makes me want to seek out more.
I felt this was a real page turner, there was lovely story telling that bought the setting and environment to life while creating thrilling moments of suspense that had me dying to know what happened next.

There is a dark element to the story, but that darker element is tinged with sadness.
This book may not suit all readers as it deal with the subject of infant death.
That being said I feel it is handled with great sensitivity and understanding of the toll it can take on people.

This novel slowly builds up the details and the characters towards its dark ending that had gothic vibes. It's a novel I'd recommend for anyone who'd like Joanna Cannon meets Wuthering Heights.
It's cast is small with Lettie and Tommy having moved to Foxash to work the land for the cooperative along with their neighbours. Both women are pregnant at the same time and it follows the strange friendship that develops. Not my usual read, but I enjoyed it all the same. The narrator was excellent at bringing this tale to life.

Reading the blurb of this book, it was the promised gothic sensibility that attracted me, so I was disappointed that for the entire first half of the book, the only hint of anything remotely gothic was the Rapunzel vibes given by Lettie's inexplicable yearning to eat her neighbour's lettuce. It was almost painfully slow, because nothing happened, except for repeated scenes of Lettie getting sweaty, getting aroused, getting her period, all in more detail than I really needed.

The plot only turned a little bit gothic at the very end of the book, but I was so entirely unprepared for it at this point that it jarred. It didn't work at all for me - I just found it unpleasant - and then before any of it was truly explored, the story abruptly ended.

I think Kate Worsley has a talent for creating visual images with words, and in that respect the book is well written, but the story itself was lacking for me, and the characters felt flat and unappealing. I didn't like it at all.

I thought the narrator of the audiobook did a good job at reading the story - she was easy to listen to.

A very slow book that only really got going in the second half! Set during the First World War it’s a bleak story which is quite dark in places. At times felt quite disjointed. I enjoyed the second half once the story got going,

This is a dark twisty tale of a couple who leave their home in order to make a new life as small holders in an incentive farming cooperative.
Who they meet and what transpires is genuinely what what they had planned or hoped for.
A grim tale of all hope lost.

Thanks to #NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to this audiobook in exchange for an honest review

Unfortunately, this one was not for me. It was extremely slow and I felt, after 39%, that nothing was happening. I struggled to pick this up, so I did give up on it. Just not for me

Kate Worsley really evokes an instant mood and location piece in this slow burn of a period drama. It's unique to its time period - spending pages upon pages in the little details; but the important ones: the smell, the touch, the senses - you get to feel everything its protagonist feels and that reflects on the book in a marvellous way.

It creates an interesting dynamic between the workers and their families and explores family life in a close knit community, and how conspiracies can grow out of nowhere and how things can escalate at the turn of a screw. It takes a while to go fully gothic, but when the gothicness of it all really kicks in, if you could call it that, it's borderline, at best, it's a blinder - the suspense, the grand finale, where all the payoff is there - it's almost enough to drive this up from a 3 to a 3.5 if not a 4.

It's emotionally sad; more on behalf of the trauma that the characters go through than anything else - the third act you'll see coming but that doesn't stop Worsley from leaving a mark. I really liked how Worsley looked at the fallout of the Land Settlement Association in the 1930s and dealt with this period of history, very well researched that gives it an air of authority with a strong, unique, obsessive, almost unreliable voice in its lead character Lettie at its core.

This is a very interesting and different style of book. As it is written by Lucy Worsley, the research has no doubt been thorough and true to life. What an insight into such a fascinating part of our British history involving the use and reuse of land to grow food for the growing population. This area of the UK has many such stories which have had a huge impact on the growth of communities and settlement patterns.
As for the human story; it is told in an unusual way from the point of view of the wife, Lettie. Until you get used to the somewhat strange dialogue, you can be rather lost but once into the tale, the narrator does an excellent job and the whole telling comes alive.
This won't suit everyone. It's a bit like alternative drama, but has great value and is a real work of art.

'Green fingers, black womb.'

'Foxash' is the story of a body. Kate Worsley enroots the story in one woman's - Lettie's -  body, and cultivates a form of high sensuousness full of the felt knowledge of the physical. Lettie tills on towards the novel's climax, experiencing every grain of the narrative as a bodily perception: '[my] body feels like syrup on a spoon.'

It's a story of growing: of growing crops on a smallholding (in the first year of production under the 1930s Land Settlement Association scheme) and the fertility of rural land; it's the story of growing sociality, co-operaton, neighbourliness and belonging; it's the story of a new life for a coalminer and his pitwife, growing seeds and plugs into cash crops of cucumbers and cane fruits. But more than that, 'Foxash' is the story of the female body growing; women's fertility; women's connectedness of spirit within the rural idyll. It's also the story of the growth of rot as collaboration breaks down; as decay grows within relationships; it's the chilling story of the insidious growth of spite, jealousy, and perfidy, and it all plays out in the media of what Lettie smells, tastes, sees, feels, hears.

In audiobooks, some Northern English accents in the wrong narrator's hands, can often come across as kiddish, somehow simple, and I've says shied away from audiobooks narrated in accents from Yorkshire/Northumberland (that's just a personal preference and no reflection upon the regions themselves!). But in 'Foxash', Alex Dunmore speaks as Lettie in the first-person present tense, in vibrant, authentic, and naturalistic Northern speech; which softly folds around Lettie's constant descriptive awareness of her breasts, her genitals, her hair, face and skin. Especially and compusively, Lettie relates how her body is sited in her nightdress.

I found that I repeatedly heard in Lettie's voice echoes of Frances in 'The Paying Guests' (Sarah Waters, coincidentally, provides the endorsement on the cover of 'Foxash'). And just like 'The Paying Guests', the narrative of 'Foxash' comprises a woman's developing inter-relatedness with two persons in a couple with whom she finds herself in close confinement. This is compounded by Lettie's other personal and physical relationship: that with her husband Tommy. In Worsley's novel, both couples exhibit a real sense of attachment to their situation; every small instance of behaviour, a gesture within the shared square of space between the two couples. In the end, we see how every one of those persons's bodies is possessed and consumed by every other person, in some way. This kind of figurative mutual cannibalism also harked back to Sarah Waters' novel. The abortion scene in particular parallelled that in 'The Paying Guests'.

Likewise to Sarah Waters, I would also compare 'Foxash' to Kiran Millwood Hargrave's writing for adults. There is that physiologic claustrophobia and shrinking-down of the female protagonist's world, as is experienced by Hargrave's Maren and Lisbet in 'The Mercies' and 'The Dance Tree' respectively. Here we have Lettie's body buffeted by her surroundings and her interactions with others. For instance, she struggles against 'sheets of crying; buffeting walls of it'. Every interaction with her immediate situation sees Lettie's five senses respond reflexively: '[the] plants [...] sung to me.'

'Foxash' is perhaps the perfect novel: its pacing is sublimely precise; the characters are so perfectly tended and nurtured by the author; and the ending is handled with exquisite skill. It's like the British, prose fiction version of a couple of Robert Frost's best-known poems.

And a considerable part of the success of 'Foxash' for me is Alex Dunmore's performance of the audiobook. She imbues miniscule dips and peaks of emotion with felt gestures in her voice of wavering, gulping, breathing fluctuations in Lettie's inner monologues and dialogue with others. I was entirely caught up in her spellbinding voice.

Great gratitude to Headline Publishing Group Ltd, Whitehouse Sound Ltd, and Tinder Press for the opportunity to review a digital copy of the audiobook, and cite excerpts of the novel in order to review the text.

I struggled through this, and ended up giving up on it a good chunk of the way through - I found it hard to engage with the book, found myself lost about what was going on. Just not one for me.

Set in 1930s England at the height of the Great Depression Foxash tells the story of Lettie and Tommy Radley who have left their reduced circumstances in the North after Tommy loses his work at the local mine. They move to rural Essex where the government is offering smallholdings to the unemployed. It seems like the perfect solution, offering a home of their own, the chance to be self-sufficient and to leave their troubled past behind. Lettie is at first suspicious of her forward, overbearing neighbours, the middleaged Jean and Adam Dell and at a loss over how they will learn to tend their land and adapt to the quiet remoteness of their new situation. But soon Lettie learns to love life on the smallholding and discovers a gift for growing and she finds kindness in the Dells despite their oddities. But the darkness that she thinks was left behind soon re-emerges and Lettie finds herself overwhelmed by secrets and mysteries, hers, Tommy’s and the Dells'.

Worsley creates a wonderful gothic atmosphere, contrasting the increasing deprivation and struggle of the Radley’s lives in the north with strikes and falling wages forcing them to make difficult choices and the hard labour and unromantic reality of their Essex smallholding. There’s a deep sense of mystery throughout, Lettie knows that there are details of Tommy’s unemployment that he hasn’t shared and while she builds a friendship with Jean she remains weary of the Dells and their interference even while she becomes increasing dependent on them for help. The tension builds as the past of both couples resurfaces and their losses and needs begin to conflict with one another. It’s hard to say more without getting into spoiler territories but there are plenty of surprises in the plot that make it gripping, even though I thought a couple of the revelations were unnecessary. Lettie is a wonderful protagonist, funny, vulnerable and determined. She knows her own mind but is as fallible as anyone. You root for her entirely through all the unexpected twists and turns
Alix Dunmore is an excellent narrator, effortlessly invoking the characters and bringing each scene to life.

This audiobook is set in 1930’s England and follows the story of two couples - Tommy and Lettie and Adam and Jean and their lives on Foxash Farm. Tommy and Lettie have been accepted by a marketing gardening government scheme (which really did exist) that helps the poverty stricken and unemployed resettle and learn the art of being a smallholder. The story began as a slow burn but as the tale went on it becomes very absorbing as you become wrapped up in how the two couples live their lives side by side, living off the land in rural England. One becomes quite engrossed in traditional garden practices and folk lore and the observations of nature You become aware of the different seasons as they are so well described Alix Dunmore is the perfect choice for the voice of this book as she takes you into this rural world and drags you in with her lyrical narration. Something about this audiobook captivates you with a childlike intrigue and the pages keep on turning because it soon becomes obvious there is something else at play here. This is an atmospheric book where you can almost smell the earth and the woods. An interesting read which also covers maternity, labour and childbearing. Thank you for my copy Headline and Netgalley.

I wasn’t too sure what to expect from Foxash by Kate Worsley. It’s set in the not too distant past, in the 1930s. I was not familiar the Land Settlement Association scheme and found it really interesting reading about it.

Tommy and his wife Lettie relocate from the North East to a smallholding in the Foxash settlement in Essex, part of a Government scheme to get the unemployed back into work and working on the land.

The story unfolds from Lettie’s perspective. She’s a young woman who has left her home and friends and all she’s known to travel to another part of the country to become a smallholder. She has no experience of farming, having only worked in a Tea House and being a miner’s wife. I really got behind Lettie and Tommy and really wanted them to make a success of their smallholding. I enjoyed following how despite all the odds they made their smallholding a success.

Two neighbouring smallholders, Jean and Adam Dell, who have successfully managed their smallholding for years take Lettie and Tommy under their wing and give them tips and help with the planting and harvesting. The smallholders work all hours on the land. The seasons come and go, crops are planted and harvested. Friendships develop and grow. It feels like a pastoral idyll.

The Settlement is their world. Jean and Adam and Lettie and Tommy beginning to live in each others pockets. Without giving away spoilers, things begin to take a darker turn and the Settlement becomes far less idyllic and things begin to feel more stifling and secrets are uncovered.

Alix Dunmore is a brilliant narrator and she really made the book feel so atmospheric. She really brought the book to life - she was quite simply Lettie .

Huge thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, Headline Tinder Press, for making this audio-ARC available to me in exchange for a fair and honest and review. I look forward to reading other books by Kate Worsley in the future.

It was a pleasure to listen to such a wonderful narration of this evocative story about Lettie and her husband Tommy. Lettie narrates, and describes her life before and after marrying Tommy. They fall on hard times when the coal pit closes and decide to take advantage of a government initiative which supports their move from the North-East to Essex to work on their own smallholding. They become close friends with their neighbours, Jean and Adam, and to begin with all goes well as they adapt to their new lifestyle. All four have secrets to keep and slowly, but surely, things start to unravel. I found this a compulsive read, thoroughly enjoyable. The beautiful book cover was a real draw too.
Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

I have reviewed the printed version of the book. Having listened to some of the audio, I like Alix Dunmore’s narration and feel it suits the book.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

I was intrigued by the blurb and have to say that this title took me totally by surprise. It’s not easy to define; it’s a bit of a mystery and domestic drama, with sinister secrets thrown in to the mix. I was absolutely captivated from start to finish and have to say that the narration, with excellent regional accents, really added to the pleasure.

Lettie and unemployed miner husband Tommy take on a new challenge when they relocate from north east England to the south east. There’s a government relocation scheme which gives a home, a grant and a support program to set up people with new skills. They are expected to grow market garden produce in return for funding and guaranteed sales fir their produce. They are assisted by neighbours, Jean and Adam Dell. They have relevant experience and in some ways, act as mentors. But the two couples are totally different. Lettie is clean and tidy, house proud and desperate to succeed in their new venture. Tommy is quiet but keen to learn. Jean and Adam are interfering and totally overbearing and tensions arise very quickly.

But there’s far more to this take; it’s one of dark secrets, hiding from past events and looking for opportunity to get what you want, at almost any cost. It’s very cleverly constructed as the narrative sweeps back and forth over present and past, with guilty secrets drip fed into the narrative. One unexpected event has dark repercussions and it takes an entirely different turn. It left me breathless at times; the power struggles, deceit and strong characters. This is a a little gem, not to be missed. I loved it.

My thanks to the publisher for a review copy via Netgalley.

Foxash by Kate Worsley was not quite what I expected from reading the synopsis, although it certainly delivered on quality writing and sinister vibes. For me, this one was a grower and just when I was thinking the pacing was flagging, I was suddenly hooked.

I hope it is not a spoiler to say that issues relating to motherhood arise so if that's a subject that you don't necessarily want to read about then it would be worth doing a little research before diving in. Otherwise, if you're prepared for a slow burn then this is a journey into the darker side of the bucolic idyll that builds to a crescendo.

The narrator, Alix Dunmore, did an excellent job of the audiobook and I felt the regional accent added to the performance.