Susie Boyt is a British novelist and journalist. She is the author of several novels and a memoir, My Judy Garland Life, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022.
Susie Boyt
The Last Hope of Girls
Review, 2001.
They went to Regent's Park the following weekend, meeting in the rose garden. "I used to live in that house there," Martha pointed to a large, tall building standing in the central curve of a pale crescent, overlooking the park, "until I was three or four." The front door was black, as were the doors of all the houses. A broad railing framed a strip of garden separating the house from the main road. On the grass two girls in dark blue coats with velvet collars were playing. "My father still lives there. We used to be very big on ducks," she said. "Some of the ducks really made me laugh. I used to like these funny black and white ones with bizarre teddy-boy-style orangy-red quiffs"
Martha and 'the new man in her life' are still getting to know each other, exchanging memories of childhood.
They followed a softly curved path through the rose beds, stopping to look at the names of the different blooms, which were displayed on small rectangular green notices.
"They've got some mighty odd names, some of those roses."
"I know."
"Starlight." he read out. "Splendid Renate. Noblesse. Pensioner's Pride."
"I learned to read here, pretty much. People like Gina Lollobrigida I really thought were just roses, for years"
Martha returns later to visit to her childhood home in the 'crescent of large houses, with their haughty Nash columns and rows of high windows'. The ducks are featured again elsewhere in the novel.