Neale, Kitty (Brenda Warren)

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Neale, Kitty (Brenda Warren)

PERSONAL:

Born in England.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Spain.

CAREER:

Writer.

WRITINGS:

A Cuckoo in Candle Lane, Orion (London, England), 2003.

Outcast Child, Orion (London, England), 2005.

The Empty Hearth, Orion (London, England), 2006.

Another Time, Another Place, Severn House (Sutton, England), 2006.

No Time for Tears, Severn House (Sutton, England), 2006.

Nobody's Girl, Avon/Harper Collins (London, England), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

British author Brenda Warren, who writes under the name Kitty Neale, began writing on the advice of a friend two years after the death of her son. Since 2003 she has penned several novels, many of them set in her native Battersea, South London. With Another Time, Another Place, Neale presents a "poignant tale [that] takes the reader on a journey through one woman's adversity to the light at the end of the tunnel," according to Booklist contributor Maria Hatton. Set in the early 1960s, the novel features Sally Jones, a wife and mother whose life is suddenly turned upside down by the illness of her grandmother, a car accident which sends her husband to the hospital, and a beating she receives at the hands of muggers. Through all her adversity, however, Sally manages to keep an optimistic view of life. Sally's struggles continue in No Time for Tears. Her husband has been released from hospital after a partial amputation of his leg, and relations become strained between the couple. The arrival of a new female neighbor with eyes for Sally's husband further exacerbates the relationship. Hatton, again writing in Booklist, also had a positive assessment of this installment in the saga, terming the novel "an engrossing story involving characters who seem so real readers will be anxious for more."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, June 1, 2006, Maria Hatton, review of Another Time, Another Place, p. 39; December 15, 2006, Maria Hatton, review of No Time for Tears, p. 22.