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Spalding & District

April 2025: The Whalebone Theatre

This month the book was The Whalebone Theatre. Most enjoyed the book. They scored it 3.8 out of 5.

The Whalebone Theatre (2022) is the debut novel of British author Joanna Quinn. A work of historical fiction, the narrative covers a period of time ranging from 1919 to 1945. Narrated in the third person, the story recounts the changing fortunes of the upper-class Seagrave family, who collectively own a Dorset country estate named  Chilcombe . The novel’s narrative complexities focus primarily upon the lives of Cristabel, Flossie, and Digby Seagrave and encompass their social development from their childhood experience of constructing the titular Whalebone Theatre to their later experiences in World War II.