Lucy
Pinney has been delighted to see her book based on experiences of the Dorset
countryside beat Harry Potter in a top ten of sales in Bridport.Her new book Country Wife held the number one spot in the top ten best sellers at the Bookshop for two weeks, above J K Rowling's. wizard tale.
Mrs Pinney, who wrote a humorous column for the Times for six years from the late 1990s, now lives on a small farm near Honiton as she puts it "with a morris dancer and numerous ducks and chickens
She based the first third of the book on her experiences of rural life in Bettiscombe, West Dorset and draws on her transition from London townie bride to naive farmer's wife.
Despite her parents being from well-known Dorset families, including the Bests of the Melplash area, she had little to prepare her for the experience.
There follows tales of the threat of bankruptcy, grappling with lambing and calving and navigating the politics of the country set, not to mention heartbreak when her husband had an affair.
Mrs Pinney's mother Alice Mary Dilke, of Whitchurch Canonicorum, has been proudly watching her daughter's novel rise up the top ten over the Last few weeks.
Lucy Pinney said: "It is just amazing because my family has been following what it has been doing in the Bridport News and said it was outselling Harry Potter in Bridport." Writing is in the blood. Her great grandmother W K Clifford wrote bestselling Victorian children's stories and her father was also a published author. After marrying she moved to the west country where in between helping run the f amily farm she opened a bed and breakfast and turned her hand to writing.
Her first book was a romantic novel called The Pink Stallion.
"My husband farmed with heavy horses and I thought I'd write about them. I was told if I'd set it in the past it would've done better, so I did another book and sent that off. Then I did lots of journalism for different places and was put on to Random House who are good at knowing what the public want. They guided me through this one." Since writing A Country Wife she has settled into living with a new partner, Ian, a former tenant farmer who gave up growing wheat for financial reasons.
She said: "He's retrained as an Aga serviceman. We're gradually returning to farming. We're making hay this year. and have planted out a wood, an orchard, and a huge vegetable garden. But it is a bit hard to think of a way of making money out of animals."
She is now working on ideas for future books.
"It would be a bit difficult to write a follow-up to A Country Wife until a few more dramatic things have happened to me. So in the meanwhile I'm researching and writing a modern love story set in the countryside."
A
Country Wife, which is based on her columns, was released in hard back
last year, and in paperback in July.
"It includes lots of funny stories about country life like the way
when you
move into a rural area you get a mini-biography about you which you never
hear but everybody else does," she said.
Review Sept 2005 - Bridport News
Lucy
Pinney's auto biographical A country wife' shows her transition from a
true Londoner to a Dorset housewife living in Bettiscombe.
Each chapter conveys a different anecdote, some comical while others heart
wrenching, but most with a true Dorset feel.
For one who is not part of the farming community, I
found it an interesting insight into their lives, though I couldn't help
but feel much of the humour was down to Pinney giving a somewhat negative
and stereotypical view of the farming community.
She describes the sexism which she often encountered from the 'alarmingly
grumpy and obscene' farmers and feeling that 'just being there she had
spoiled the party'. However this may have simply been her view of 1970s
farm life.
One can't help laughing at this city girl as she copes with country life
miserably, unsuccessfully delivering her first lamb or attempting to get
a pig's head unstuck from a drain.
She describes herself two years on as having a 'tattered muddy coat, cutting
her hair herself, and still trying to grasp the basic principles of farming'.
We travel with Pinney throughout the book, from her marriage and having
her first child, to her husband leaving her.
When reading it, you will no doubt begin to fall in love with the character,
experiencing her ups and downs, failures and successes with her. It is
not often one can read a book, so well written and be able to identify,
so closely to the characters and settings, when living in Bridport, but
this one is a cracker!
Take it on holiday or read it in the bath with the door locked, either
way it's a must read for all of Dorset.
