Winner of the Virginia Prize for Fiction, Kipling & Trix tells the story of Rudyard Kipling, author of The Jungle Book, and his sister Trix, as they grow up.
Both mean to be writers, both are looking for love but they are hampered by the bitter legacy of their childhood. Not quite six, Rudyard and his little sister, Trix, just three, had been left behind in Southsea by their parents when they went back to India. The children found themselves abandoned to the power of a foster mother determined to break the boy’s spirit and to take the little girl for herself. How will this past shape their future lives? Based on extensive research and set in exotic locations across the world, Kipling & Trix is a story to fascinate women and men readers alike.
'Hamer's book opens up the complex world of the Kiplings, moving between continents and momentous world events'
"Although based closely on historical fact, Kipling and Trix is a tour-de-force of imaginative fiction as well as a lyrically written, if often harrowing, tale of surprising passion."
'Mary Hamer's Kipling and Trix elegantly walks the borders between fact and fiction in her retelling of Rudyard Kipling's story and his relationship with his sister Trix'
‘Mary Hamer's novel about the lives of Rudyard Kipling and his sister Alice, 'Trix' to her family, is intelligent, vividly imagined and a real page-turner’
'The childhood scenes are particularly compelling, revealing how brother and sister, though dependents, were gradually becoming rivals....The book is a rich collage of potent scenes - you shift viewpoint and we see Rud and Trix through the eyes of many others.'
"Truly engaging"
