Bleakly Hall

Monty and Ada last saw one another on the frontlines of the First World War, when Monty was a nurse and Ada an ambulance driver who drove like the devil. Now, the two friends have been reunited at crumbling Bleakly Hall, where Monty has been hired to look after the grumpy, gouty guests who have come to take the Hall’s curative waters. But the end of the Great War has brought changes for everyone at Bleakly, and not all of them are good. Monty, mourning the death of her beloved Sophia, has a score to settle with the elusive Captain Foxley; Ada misses her wartime sense of purpose; the Blackwood brothers must reinvent Bleakly for a new era; while Foxley has his own ways of keeping his demons at bay.

Reviews of Bleakly Hall

"I can't remember the last time I read a novel that fizzed with so much energy, or swung so acrobatically between lightly carbonated comedy and pitch-black horror" Scotsman "In a series of funny, moving set pieces, di Rollo explores the aftermath of the Great War through her cast of bewildered veterans" Marie Claire "Often very amusing and tartly observed… a bold comic creation" Times Literary Supplement "A comedy of manners, given tragic depths" The Tablet