Monica Dickens crafted narratives that keenly observed everyday life and human relationships, often drawing from her own experiences. Her writing delves into the inner lives of characters, revealing their joys and struggles with an authentic voice. Dickens aimed to entertain readers and inspire recognition of their own lives within her stories, creating a compelling and relatable literary world. Her distinctive style is marked by its directness and a profound ability to capture the subtleties of human nature.
Set in post-World War II Britain, this heartwarming novel tells the story of a young woman named Rose who sets out to create a meaningful life for herself despite the challenges she faces. With its vivid characters and charming prose, The Nightingales Are Singing is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.
Dora is invited out to America to help set up a home of rest for horses. When she leaves and is given a horse to take back to Follyfoot, she can't believe her luck. One of the horses falls ill. And it looks like the same epidemic that is sweeping America . Has Dora's horse brought the disease to England?
Leonard's life has never seemed safer or better. Then through the door comes Toby, he brings with him the excitement of change but he is not what he appears to be, and in the end brings tragedy.
Lieutenant-Commander, the hero of this novel, is axed from the Navy at the age of 36, one of many thousands obliged to re-plan their lives as the result of cuts in the armed services. A widower with a small daughter, he has no experience or knowledge outside submarines and the Royal Navy. His whole life had been that of a sailor since he joined up direct from school at the beginning of the war. This is not only the story of his struggles and adventures when he tries to find some way of earning his living; it is the story of his difficulty in adjusting himself to an unfamiliar civilian world. Monica Dickens's novel is the story of all such men in any of the services who find themselves so rudely thrust into the ordinary life of their country which, though they have served unselfishly, they find they are ill-equipped to live in. Written with the lighter humorous touch of some of her earlier books, it is a sympathetic presentation of the human side of one of those mass adjustments forced on society by the changing nature of the world and its affairs.
After his young wife's sudden death Daniel sets off in search of the free life he knew as a child. He encounters a wealth of reputable and disreputable but always delightful characters.
Follyfoot Farm is a retirement home for rescued horses, managed by the Colonel with the help of his stepdaughter Callie and stable-hands Dora and Steve, who all have their hands full caring for the animals.
The Winds of Heaven is a 1955 novel about 'a widow, rising sixty, with no particular gifts or skills, shunted from one to the other of her more or less unwilling daughters on perpetual uneasy visits, with no prospect of her life getting anything but worse’ (Afterword). One daughter is the socially ambitious Miriam living in commuter belt with her barrister husband and children; one is Eva, an aspiring actress in love with a married man; and the third is Anne, married to a rough but kindly Bedfordshire smallholder who is the only one who treats Louise with more than merely dutiful sympathy. The one relation with whom she has any empathy is her grandchild.
