Falling Angels – Tracy Chevalier

At its simplest, this is a tale of two girls, who become friends and grow up in London during the first two decades fo the 20th century. Overlying this simple story is the emergence of women’s suffrage, and the slow but steady social changes between the death of Queen Victoria and the upheavals of World War I.

The action revolves around a fictional graveyard in North London, where two families have adjacent plots, and where the girls themselves meet, and then befriend a young grave digger, whose contributions to the narrative provide an insight into how the metropolitain world worked at the start of the 20 century.

Buy it: Amazon link