The Art of Life by S.L. Russell

 

The Art of Life

 by S.L. Russell 

My Thanks to Sue Russell and Literally PR for sending me The Art of Life  to review and inviting me onto the tour.

Synopsis

Fen Bailey has a comfortable life - but it's stifling her. She has her husband and family and everything she needs, except a sense of who she is. When she discovers an unconventional art school deep within the Yorkshire Dales, she hopes it may be the key to freeing the artist she used to be and longs to revive. But as she seeks to live and create, disastrous news from home threatens all she has achieved. Torn between her old life and the new, can she fulfil her obligations and still be true to herself? Or will the price of freedom be too high?

My Review

Where to start ??????

I loved every word in this beautifully written and , at times , extremely emotive narrative as we follow Fen’s life over a couple of years. This is the type of story that grasps you from the very first paragraph , taking you with Fen as she navigates her feelings and needs, along with the leap of faith she takes onto the next chapter of her life.

Once you realise where the plot is heading you know it isn’t going to be plain sailing and this is a story that will have you looking at your own life and choices you may have made , whilst also wondering what your life would have been like if you had been a woman like Fen. A lot of women experience that empty nest syndrome when the children leave home , wondering what they are going to do with themselves and what is going to happen next. The Art of Life certainly makes you realise that we should never give up on our dreams though whether you would follow them to the extent fen did is up to each individual.

As a Yorkshire woman , living away from the county of my birth I can fully understand the pull of the landscape and the Yorkshire folk who are there for you through good times and bad times.

The Art of Life will stay with me for a long time and it is certainly a book that I would highly recommend . It will give you pause for thought, it will have you in tears at times but above all else it will show you love and hope.

About the Author

I was born in 1951 and educated at Rochester Grammar School and Durham University, where I studied History. I've done a few things in my life: played the piano in a ballet school, worked in Woolworth's, scrubbed steps in hospitals, and taught English in Indonesia, among others. Before leaving to raise two daughters, now adult, for 12 years I taught children with special educational needs, and enjoyed it immensely. At around the same time I spent 17 years as a Samaritan volunteer, where I certainly received more than I gave. I learned a lot, not least how privileged my life was and is.

Even as a child I knew I wanted to write. At around 12 I had a clutch of rejection slips I was quite proud of in a perverse kind of way. But life tends to interrupt and all I ever did was sigh and complain until some friends challenged me to get on and write the novel - before my 50th birthday. The result was Leviathan with a Fish-hook (2009.) This became a trilogy and then to my great surprise other stories followed. The ninth was published in 2022; entitled The Wounds of Time it follows on from The Healing Knife (2020)) and The Thorn of Truth (2021). I couldn't avoid my Christian viewpoint even if I wanted to, but the stories are neither preachy nor pious but realistic, with characters that have patchwork histories, doubts, flaws and failures, rather than haloes - just like me, and probably you as well.

I live in Kent UK with my husband and Rosie the dog. My other love is music: I sing, play the flute and am a church organist.

I have a website www.slrussell.org and a blog www.suerussellsblog.blogspot.co.uk which you are very welcome to visit and do leave a comment if you wish.