My first book, A Sweet Life – growing up in a Dorset sweet shop is a personal and poignant memoir about growing up in a family business. It is an uplifting story of enterprise and opportunity, of persistence and community. It taps into nostalgia for the pre-internet, pre-out-of-town-shopping retail experience when there was a shop for everything you needed on the high street.
A Sweet Life describes the customers and characters who were of their time, who came in as regular as sunrise for their sweets and their smokes. This was the age when buying a quarter pound of wine gums weighed out for you in a white paper bag was as familiar as having your pint of milk delivered, a time when twenty cigarettes cost you fifty pence and when the height of sophistication was a box of Black Magic, or being a lady who loves Milk Tray.
Book signing at Waterstones Dorchester
I launched my book with several signings at Waterstones Dorchester, Dorset, surrounded by family and friends. It was a dream come true – the perfect ending and yet the ideal start to the new life of my book. And for me. (Photo credit Cathryn Ella)
Reviews of A Sweet Life
I read this book in one go. A delightful account of childhood and early years in a sweet shop in Dorchester owned by her parents which is written with such piercing delicacy as to bring many memories of my own flooding back. The last few chapters are extraordinarily moving and touching, a kind of requiem to her father. A beautiful book and also a profound allegory, read it, you will love it.
Philip R Wood, CBE, QC (hon)
If you remember fruit salads and black jacks, the long hot summer of 1976 and being sent off and told to come back by tea time, you will love this book. This is more than just a memoir about growing up in a sweet shop – it’s a slice of history brought back to life. Lucinda’s writing is so vivid you will think you are standing next to her as she weighs sweets and watches life unfold before her.
I was expecting this to be a delightful read, which it is, but I wasn’t expecting it to be such a page turner. An absolute joy.
Emma Davies
So poignant, it made me laugh, brought tears to my eyes, gave me some food for thought, was quite profound in places and captured the essence of so many things.
– via Amazon
A Sweet Life is available to buy in bookshops and in print and ebook format online.
Click here to buy A Sweet Life on Amazon.co.uk
Click here to buy A Sweet Life on Amazon.com
Click here to buy A Sweet Life on Hive.co.uk
Click here to buy A Sweet Life on Waterstones.com
Click here to buy A Sweet Life on Wordery.com
Alternatively copies can be ordered in bookshops.