Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth

 

I’m crying for these fictional girls because they have counterparts in real life as well although, of course, as Sally Hepworth points out in her Acknowledgments: “For every villain in the foster care world there are a hundred heroes working tirelessly to help these kids and fight this broken system”.

Darling Girls is the story of three girls and their foster carer. Sally Hepworth’s writing is so powerful that in spite of the sadness and anger it made me feel I was compelled to keep reading and hated having to put the book down for things like eating and sleeping and, I won’t say housework because that’s a given.

The book moves from past to present and is able to show how the girls’ lives were shaped by their childhood experiences in their foster home, Wild Meadows, a beautiful country house in the town of Port Agatha. Each page reveals something new, right up to the end. 

Holly Fairchild, the foster ‘mother’, is a sickly sweet, terrifying character (shades of “Mommy Dearest”, Joan Crawford, maybe). Brilliant Sally Hepworth packs a lot of surprises into Holly. The three girls are: perfectionist Jessica; aggressive Norah and kind, loving, self-doubting Alicia. The girls form a strong bond and think of themselves as sisters which proves essential for their survival. 

The girls, who have kept their bond into their adult years, are called  back to Wild Meadows to be interviewed by police when a body is found under the floor of the basement. 

That is the basis for this absorbing tale which I can’t recommend highly enough to lovers of good literary fiction. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Published by Pan Macmillan