Reviews of CANDY'S CHILDREN

THESE ARE ALL GENUINE REVIEWS FROM THE NATIONAL AND LOCAL PRESS, AND FROM INDEPENDENT READERS - just to encourage you to try Candy's Children!

Lesley Toll, Daily Mail -"This book is most impressive..."

Becky Moran, Devon Today - "Interweaving the stories of the five main characters - plus their mother - she has drawn on her family's own experiences and looks at the darker side of family relationships."

Exmouth Journal - "It's a long and complicated story but it was worth it - it's a good story."

Sarah Pitt, Western Morning News - "This gripping Novel by Sylvia Murphy draws on her own childhood in pre-partition Palestine. It tells of Candy's love for a Muslim boy and being left, age 15, by her parents to give birth to a child who she believes is stillborn. As her children investigate the truth behind her death they learn about her past.

Bridget Baines - "At present I’m finding it ‘unputdownable’ and have just come in slightly late to work as a result! I’m very surprised that you didn’t get it picked up by a publisher, except I suppose that it falls between niches. No wonder you sacked your agent! Also, the historical bits of Israel and Palestine are sensitive to some I suppose. I do enjoy the style – it’s varied in tone, and the characters (though some are a bit unlikely) are nevertheless interesting and likeable."

Carol Brooking - "What a wonderful book!! I was given it for Christmas and just couldn't put it down. A fascinating and intriguing story so intricately interwoven . . . and I want more! I found the story line gripping, moving and humorous. Candy's Children also fascinated me as I was introduced to aspects of Palestine about which I had previously known nothing. I enjoyed all the characters and would love to know even more about each of their stories ... each character could have a story of their own and I hope she'll write is for us!! . . . and I am REALLY pleased it ended as it did.

Having learnt a little about the author I now admire the book even more!"

Nicholas Clee, The Guardian Review - "Sylvia Murphy has self-published this superior saga some years after writing novels for Hodder& Stoughton and Gollancz. So it is fair to ask whether there are qualitative differences between Candy's Children and the output of the principal London houses. Yes, the novel has a dreary cover (!); and one guesses that some London editors woould have urged Murphy to flesh out one or two important episodes in the story. Perhaps, too, this kind of novel, with melodramatic events involving glamorous characters in a variety of international locations, is not as fashionable as it once was. But anyone who enjoyes the fiction of Penny Vicenzi, say, will get pleasure from Candy's Children. Murphy's prose is often startlingly apt and her scene-setting is authentic. It is not surprising that the author rushes certain elements of her plot because she packs so much into her 300 pages. Her heroine, born in Palestine before the second world war, has an illegitimate child she believes, wrongly, to have died; emigrating to England she marries a pilot, and also believes wrongly that he has died; then she marries a matinee idol; then an Earl. When her ill-assorted family gathers for her funeral a gloriously over-the-top finale ensues."

Claire Burns - "This is a complicated story that combines nostalgic accounts of the Middle East and England during and after World War 2, with the tension and anger of modern terrorism. An old lady makes a mysterious visit to the country she once loved and knew as Palestine, only to become a victim of a bomb atrocity, and this brings together her children who gradually learn about themselves and how they came to be born to a mother they never took the trouble to understand, and who was never able to bring them together as a family.

Tautly plotted and written with the same sharp observation that has characterised all her books, Sylvia Murphy has crafted an un-put-downable tale about a lifetime of family betrayal."

Yvonne Carey - "I loved the Candy Story. It's sort of huge but intimate at the same time and you never know what is coming next and you get the feeling it could go on for ever - Candy, the sequel?"

Sarah Rankin, University of Bedfordshire - "Candy's Children is such an enthralling story, had the novel been snapped up by a publishing house, I'm certain it would be a best-seller. The story is superbly paced with memorable characters, an immensely enjoyable book to read. The visual impact of Sylvia Murphy's excellent writing would make this book an exciting TV mini series. Drama, mystery, pathos, rags to riches, it's all there."