Festival at Rowdean/A Very Special Painting Class (Storycuts)

Jul 1, 2025 6:37 PM

Author:Elvi Rhodes

In 'Festival at Rowdean', Melanie has spent an exciting year abroad nannying for a family with two children, so her return home seems something of an anticlimax. Everything now seems so dull in her home village of Rowdean. She is mortified when the village committee then insist she be involved in the organisation of a village festival. But could this be just the thing to bring her home town back to life for her?

In 'A Very Special Painting Class', among her other part-time jobs, Lisa works as a model for a painting class. Sitting completely still for long periods of time can be uncomfortable, but the money helps her to keep her flat and bring up her daughter Janie. But as one of the students begins to notice Lisa's features, could an unlikely friendship form?

Part of the Storycuts series, these two short stories were previously published in the collection Summer Promise and Other Stories.

Reviews

Hull's answer to Catherine Cookson

—— BBC Radio 4's Front Row

A heart-warming story filled with compelling action

—— Rosie Goodwin

Wonderfully fully-fleshed characters are the mainstay of [Val Wood's] stories

—— Peterborough Telegraph

A gripping saga

—— The People's Friend

Elif Shafak tells stories of great urgency, heart, and intellectual acuity. Honour is a powerful tale of family connection and heartbreak, offering us insight and delight in equal measure. This is a compulsively readable novel, an exquisite and deep rendering of the fullness of life.

—— Aurelie Sheehan, author of The Anxiety of Everyday Objects

Shafak will challenge Paulo Coelho's dominance

—— The Independent

An honour killing is at the centre of this stunning novel... Exotic, evocative and utterly gripping

—— The Times

Lushly and memorably magic-realist... This is an extraordinarily skilfully crafted and ambitious narrative

—— The Independent

The book calls to mind The Color Purple in the fierceness of its engagement with male violence and its determination to see its characters to a better place. But Shafak is closer to Isabel Allende in spirit, confidence and charm. Her portrayal of Muslim cultures, both traditional and globalising, is as hopeful as it is politically sophisticated. This alone should gain her the world audience she has long deserved

—— The Guardian

In Honour, Shafak treats an important, absorbing subject in a fast-paced, internationally familiar style that will make it accessible to a wide readership

—— Sunday Times

Fascinating and gripping - a wonderful novel

—— Rosamund Lupton, author of Sister

Vivid storytelling... that explores the darkest aspects of faith and love

—— Sunday Telegraph

Moving, subtle and ultimately hopeful, Honour is further proof that Shafak is the most exciting Turkish novelist to reach western readers in years

—— Irish Times

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