I really liked the narrative voice the author created for Hick with its sharp dialogue, witty wisecracks and waspish putdowns.
‘I loved being the brave and battered little dinghy. At times, Hick’s adoration for Eleanor serves to make that undoubtedly great lady appear a little like a saint on a pedestal. Throughout the book, I felt I was getting to know Hick a whole lot better than I was getting to know Eleanor, who always remained somewhat elusive as a character even during flashbacks to scenes in the White House. Now don’t get me wrong, I loved the way Hick’s early life was written about but I wasn’t expecting it would form such a focus of the book. At the same time, it charts the awakening of Hick’s sexuality and her growing realisation that marriage was never going to be a route she would take, that ‘ Women were not interruptions, for me.’ Indeed the story sharing scene seems to act as a pretext for a long section depicting the traumatic events Hick endured as a child, her escape from an abusive home, her time spent with some delightfully eccentric circus folk and her eventual move to a career in journalism. Eleanor’s stories take only a few minutes of reading time. One such flashback is to a train trip during which they share their most intimate secrets and childhood memories. What follows is a series of flashbacks to the years they shared together. Opening in 1945, shortly after the death of President Franklin D Roosevelt, Lorena Hickok, known as ‘Hick’, recalls her first meetings with Eleanor, the development of their relationship and her move into the White House. *links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme Published: 1 st Feb 2018 (ebook), 24 th Apr 2018 (hardcover) Genre: Historical FictionĪ.uk ǀ ǀ .uk (supporting UK bookshops) Filled with fascinating back-room politics, the secrets and scandals of the era, and exploring the potency of enduring love, it is an imaginative tour-de-force from a writer of extraordinary and exuberant talent.įormat: ebook, hardcover (240 pp.) Publisher: Granta Books Told by the indomitable Hick, White Houses is the story of Eleanor and Hick’s hidden love, and of Hick’s unlikely journey from her dirt-poor childhood to the centre of privilege and power. With them went the celebrated journalist Lorena Hickok – Hick to friends – a straight-talking reporter from South Dakota, whose passionate relationship with the idealistic, patrician First Lady would shape the rest of their lives. In 1933, President Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt took up residence in the White House.
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