Start With A Book, Finish With A Friend

Finding Myself In Britain by Amy Boucher Pye is a wonderful book – charming, chatty, anecdotal and amusing. And I was blessed to receive a copy.

Amy is an American, married to an English vicar and living in London. The book is an insight into her life, as she compares life and the customs in Britain, with life as she had known it in the States.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and loved the way the chapters were divided up over a year, which began in September and ended with a Summer holiday a year later. Each chapter evoked memories within me – ‘More Tea Vicar’ had me instantly transported back to being four years old and drinking tea (sometimes slurping out of the saucer!) and dunking ginger nuts, at my Nanny’s house. Amy has a marvellous ‘chatty’ style of writing, that has the effect of making the reader forget they are reading a book. It feels more like reading a letter from a dear friend, and therefore has the power to draw out memories from deep inside the reader. In fact, just reading the title stirred up very vivid memories for me, with ‘The Day They Buried Diana’. I was overcome with the immense feeling of  sadness, which was both personal and part of the national grief experienced at that time.

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