Author:Catherine Cookson
Volume 2 opens with a seventeen-year-old Mary Ann struggling with the painful business of growing up as her first love, Corny Boyle, leaves for America. It follows her through her eventual marriage to Corny, and the joys and trials of being a wife, and a mother to six-year-old twins, Rose Mary and David.
It's 1930, and Secrets tells the tale of one girl caught in family mystery, a struggle against cruelty, and a quest for love . . .
—— from the publisher's descriptionWith characters it is impossible not to care about, this is storytelling at its very best
—— Daily MailAn emotional and moving epic you won't forget in a hurry
—— Woman’s WeeklyCombines dazzling erudition with assured narrative skills to offer glimpses of some of history's darkest corners, and stark and timely challenges to the very notions of civilisation and progress
—— Independent on SundayA dazzling hall of mirrors... Ferociously ambitious... Illumined by a fizzing passion for the recondite
—— Daily TelegraphAn astonishingly assured début, funny and serious ... I was delighted
—— Salman RushdieShe is . . . a George Eliot of multi-culturalism
—— Daily Telegraph[Zadie Smith] is one of the prominent voices of her generation
—— Sunday TimesBritain's finest young author
—— The List[Zadie Smith] packs more intelligence, humour and sheer energy into any given scene than anyone else of her generation
—— Sunday Telegraph[White Teeth] established a model for how to make sense-and art-out of the complexity, diversity and pluck that have defined the beginning of this century
—— TimeThe first publishing sensation of the millennium
—— ObserverWhite Teeth reflects a new generation
—— Guardian[Zadie Smith] is one of the prominent voices of her generation