Why a Booktrail?
1989: What happened that summer at Vanes, country house?
The Beloved Girls
What you need to know before your trail
Catherine, a successful barrister, vanishes from a train station on the eve of her anniversary. Is it because she saw a figure – someone she believed long dead? Or was it a shadow cast by her troubled, fractured mind?
The answer lies buried in the past. It lies in the events of the hot, seismic summer of 1989, at Vanes – a mysterious West Country manor house – where a young girl, Jane Lestrange, arrives to stay with the gilded, grand Hunter family, and where a devastating tragedy will unfold. Over the summer, as an ancient family ritual looms closer, Janey falls for each member of the family in turn. She and Kitty, the eldest daughter of the house, will forge a bond that decades later, is still shaping the present . . .
Locations
ResetTravel Guide
BookTrail Somerset with Harriet Evans and the Beloved Girls
There is no Vanes country house in real life you will be pleased to know, but there are plenty of houses dotted in and around the region that you could visit and imagine the imposing and dark facade of Vanes is before you.
Somerset is in South West England and not far from Bristol or London as described in the novel. The family in the novel go on day trips toWindsdor Castle or the Chilterns so these are also nearby.
Vanes and the ceremony of the Bees…
‘It’s a funny old house. They have this ceremony every summer . . . There’s an old chapel, in the grounds of the house. Half-derelict. The Hunters keep bees in there. Every year, on the same day, the family processes to the chapel. They open the combs, taste the honey. Take it back to the house. Half for them -‘ my father winced, as though he had bitten down on a sore tooth. ‘And half for us.’
BookTrail Boarding Pass: The Beloved Girls
Destination/location: Somerset Author/guide: Harriet Evans Departure Time: 1940s, 1980s, 2000s
Back to ResultsWhere Next?
