Alvina Houghton, the only daughter of a failing draper in the mining town of Woodhouse, refuses to settle into spinsterhood. She trains as a maternity nurse, plays piano for her father’s cinema, and falls in with the Natcha-Kee-Tawara troupe of travelling performers, among them the silent Italian Ciccio, who will lead her out of England altogether.
Lawrence’s most comic and picaresque novel, winner of the James Tait Black Prize, for readers who think they know him. Download the free EPUB.