RICHARD E. ROCK

You don’t have to live in Swansea to enjoy this book, but it helps.

That said, not only do I live in Swansea, but I actually used to live on the very road where this story is set.

It’s 1939 and the grim prospect of a Second World War is casting a dark shadow over the kingdom. And in the midst of all this uncertainty we meet the Frooms; a perfectly ordinary family living their perfectly ordinary lives. But there is no such thing as a perfectly ordinary family, is there? For beneath the surface, every member is struggling with his or her own conflicts.

Jim, for example, who is a butcher, is broiling with unprocessed trauma from his experiences in The Great War. He’s also wrestling with a gambling addiction. And behind the professional front he presents to his customers, he knows he’s failing his family and feels as if he’s drowning. But then an opportunity arises in the form of the Black Market.

Mary, meanwhile, has to publicly play the role of devoted and supportive wife while privately trying to steer the leaky ship that is her family through these stormy seas. Her eldest son is abroad, serving with the RAF, which is worrying enough, and she has no idea that her husband is risking fortune or ruin with his dodgy dealings.

I’ve seen this fine novel described as a ‘sweeping family saga’, but I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. It’s an intimate family saga, and all the better for it. In Weights and Measures we peek through the curtains and eavesdrop on the lives of this ‘ordinary family’ as they negotiate the coming war and each other. Every character is richly drawn and relatable and as readers we can’t help but root for them.

It’s an awful cliché to say that you couldn’t put a book down, but it was certainly true here. Weights and Measures was a joy to read. It’s melancholy and compelling and I felt as if I’d been drawn into the Froom family and become one of them. And yes, being a Swansea boy certainly helped with the visualisation, but the author renders the time and place so evocatively that, as I said at the start, you don’t have to be from Swansea to enjoy this.

And on that cheery note, here’s an amusing story: I went to a launch event for Weights and Measures at Swansea Waterstones. Author Jane Fraser was explaining that her father really was a butcher during the Second World War, but as far as she knew he wasn’t selling on the Black Market. At that point, host Alan Bilton (who is also an author) piped up and said, “Ooh! My mother was! She was selling eggs!”

Priceless.

Weights and Measures by Jane Fraser is published by Watermark Press and is out now.