Shes Leaving Home

Years later, when Martha is asked how the sixties got going, she remembers this moment, waiting in the foyer. The cheerful bulk of Josie fitting tightly inside the box office booth; Frankie, all quiffed black hair, doling out viciously bright sweets . . . But the times they are a-changing. And while her father, the projectionist at the Grande cinema, cloaks himself in Hollywood fantasies, and her mother mourns her lost youth, Martha is determined that she will not waste herself on dreams. She has her own life to live. Martha is leaving home.

Brilliantly capturing the longing for freedom and change, She's Leaving Home is about the madness, the intensity and the passion that made the sixties an iconic decade.

'Plenty of wry humour. . . once Martha reaches Liverpool, she finds her horizons broadened by such heady delights as poetry readings, CND protests, sex and Earl Grey tea' Amber Pearson, Daily Mail

'Bakewell conjures up Liverpool in the early Sixties, sensitively portraying an era on the cusp between post-war privation and Sixties hedonism . . captures both the intense self-absorption of the young and the disappointments of middle age . . . very readable and perceptive' Vanessa Berridge, Daily Express

Jpeg of All the Nice Girls

Liverpool late 1950s. This is a story of three people: a suppressed mother; a father, projectionist at the local cinema which has seen better days; and their daughter Martha. It is a time of many escapes: Nureyev defects in London; Gagarin escapes the earth's atmosphere to be the first man in space; the Beatles escape the dreariness of Liverpool to seek their fortune in Hamburg. In Britain the drab 50s are giving way to the lively 60s and the young sense it.

With shades of Billy Liar, and Absolute Beginners, this novel brilliantly captures that longing for freedom. Sixteen year old Martha is leaving home.