Postcards from the Past (by Marcia Willett)

I am thoroughly enjoying re-reading my large collection of novels by Marcia Willett.  It’s only six years since I read ‘Postcards from the Past’, but I had entirely forgotten the story. When I picked it up to re-read a couple of days ago, and realised that there was something of a mystery, I wondered if I would recall the outcome: but I didn’t. I found the the book difficult to put down, and finished it rather later last night than I was planning to be awake.

The novel opens in quite a dramatic way. Billa - who lives with her brother Ed - finds a postcard in the mail. It’s from Tris, a stepbrother whom she had not seen or heard of in fifty years - and she never liked him. The picture on the front reminds her of an unpleasant incident with Tris as a child, and she feels very disturbed. It takes her a day or two to show Ed, and he too feels almost threatened by the casual message, saying that Tris was on his way to see them. 

Just down the street lives their older half-brother Dom, someone they have always loved and respected, who also had a bad experience with Tris as a child. Dom, too, receives a nasty postcard that gives him a jolt. And a third one arrives, one that targets one of Billa’s worst memories. They start to worry that, even after all this time, Tris can cause chaos or worse…

But there’s never just one story in Marcia Willett’s novels. Another significant character is Tilly, Dom’s goddaughter, who’s staying with him while she’s between jobs. She’s doing some part-time work at the local pub, and she’s also helping a school friend with a start-up business, helping older people with IT. She’s a sociable person who prefers being part of a team to working alone, but she likes spending time with the clients she meets. One of them is the recently widowed Sir Alec, whom she likes enormously. 

Another client is a retreat house, and I was very pleased to realise - as happened the first time I read it - that this novel has a connection with ‘The Christmas Angel’, which I re-read just a couple of months ago.  The delightful nuns, including the enthusiastic Sister Emily, make an appearance, as Tilly is asked to set up and maintain a website for them. And Clem, newly ordained, with his son Jakey now seven years old, plays an important part in the story. Jakey is one of my favourite of all Marcia Willett’s creations; I knew he reappeared, aged ten, in the novel ‘Homecomings’, but had quite forgotten that he has an important part to play in this book too. 

So it’s a character-based story, with mostly very likeable, believable people interacting in a variety of ways - but there was also the threat of Tris reappearing, hovering at the back of my consciousness, and impinging on Billa and her brothers increasingly.  With a multi-viewpoint narrative, we get to see hints of Tris, spying out the scene, getting to know some of the younger folk before he actually makes his appearance. It’s not obvious at all how much he can be trusted, although he’s clearly doing things in an underhand way. It causes just the right amount of tension without (at least from the reader point of view) too much stress. 

There’s quite a dramatic climax - Tris, it turns out, does have some extenuating circumstances for his nastiness as a child, and I felt some sympathy for him, as did Billa and Ed. But even though the reader also gets to see him when he’s plotting and laughing at how easy it is to fool them, I still didn’t recall the events of the final chapters. 

I thought it an excellent novell, and would recommend it to anyone who likes character-based women’s fiction with a bit of a bite - particularly anyone who has read and enjoyed ‘The Christmas Angel’.

Review copyright 2021 Sue's Book Reviews