2021/155: Old Baggage -- Lissa Evans

2021/155: Old Baggage -- Lissa Evans

‘You’re a very disputatious woman,’ he said, as if that were a slur. [loc. 2189]

This is, chronologically, the first in the loose trilogy that continues with Crooked Heart and V for Victory, both of which I read in 2021 during pandemic lockdown. Old Baggage is at once more and less cheerful: it's set before WW2, and focusses on women's rights, especially the multiple campaigns for female enfranchisement.

The setting is Hampstead in 1928, and the protagonist is Mattie Simpkin, a single woman in her late fifties who is somewhat adrift, nostalgic for the glory days of the suffragettes. ( no spoilers )