The Painter's Daughters

SELECTED FOR THE BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB | WINNER OF THE MSLEXIA NOVEL COMPETITION 'Beautifully written . . . I raced through it' HILARY MANTEL 'As exquisitely and tenderly rendered as a Gainsborough painting' TRACY CHEVALIER 'Convincing, engaging, transporting' GUARDIAN 'A wonderfully powerful and haunting novel with a hugely gripping plot' DEBORAH MOGGACH 1759, Ipswich. Sisters Peggy and Molly Gainsborough are the best of friends and do everything together. They spy on their father as he paints, they rankle their mother as she manages the books, they tear barefoot through the muddy fields that surround their home. But there is another reason they are inseparable: from a young age, Molly has had a tendency to forget who she is, to fall into confusion, and Peggy knows instinctively that no one must find out. When the family move to Bath, Thomas Gainsborough finds fame as a portrait artist, while his daughters are thrown into the whirl of polite society. Here, the merits of