Freya by Anthony Quinn will be featured on the Radio 2 Book Club on Monday 29 February.
The book was selected with the help of a panel made up of Reading Agency and library staff from across the UK.
We have an exclusive extract available for you to read.
You can WIN 10 copies of Freya for your reading group, just visit our Noticeboard.
Freya
Amid the wild celebrations of VE Day, Freya Wyley meets Nancy Holdaway, the prelude to a devoted and competitive friendship that will endure on and off for the next two decades. Freya – wilful, ambitious, outspoken – pursues a career in journalism which the chauvinism of Fleet Street and her own impatience conspire to thwart; while Nancy – gentler, less self-confident – struggles to get her first novel published. At university both become entangled with Robert Cosway, a charismatic young man whose ambition will have a momentous bearing on their lives.
Beneath the relentless thrum of changing times and a city being reshaped, we glimpse the eternal: the battles fought by women in pursuit of independence and love. Stretching from the Nuremberg war trials to the advent of the TV celebrity, from innocence abroad to bitter experience at home, Freya is a portrait of an extraordinary woman taking arms against a sea of political and personal turmoil.
About the author
Anthony Quinn was born in Liverpool in 1964. He was educated at St Francis Xavier’s College, a Catholic Grammar School, and at Pembroke College, Oxford, where he read Classics. In 1986 he moved to London, working at Zwemmer’s Bookshop on Charing Cross Road and renting a room in Islington so narrow he could touch both walls from the middle of it. His earliest break in journalism was to write book reviews for the recently launched Independent, whose literary editor was Sebastian Faulks. In the 1990s he became slightly more prosperous and moved to a bigger room, this one equipped with a kitchen and a flip-down bed. He continued to write for newspapers and magazines, and interviewed many writers, including Alan Hollinghurst, William Boyd and Sarah Waters. He was for fifteen years the film critic of the Independent and also wrote a wine column for Esquire magazine.
Having been a judge on the 2006 Man Booker Prize he wrote his first novel the following year: the two events may have been related. The Rescue Man won the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award. Since then he has written three others, Half of the Human Race, The Streets and Curtain Call. He still lives in Islington, with his wife, the journalist and author Rachel Cooke.
Get involved
Tune in to Simon Mayo’s Drivetime show on Monday 29 February to hear a live interview with Anthony Quinn talking about his book.
Have you read Freya? You can share your thoughts with us on Twitter, post a review, or add it to your group’s reading list.
Want to find out more? Take a look at the Radio 2 Book Club Twitter feed or find out more on the Radio 2 Book Club website.
