About the book The Last Christmas

When a final goodbye in Cornwall is only the beginning…

Meredith Tremayne Russell has spent her life mapping the world, first in intelligence during WWII, and later as a professor. But at ninety-eight with time running out, she faces a journey she cannot chart, a return to her old Cornish home to sell it and to scatter her beloved husband’s ashes.

With her is her twenty-five-year-old granddaughter, Grace, a dyslexic who believes she is a failure in a family of academics. For Grace the trip is a welcome escape from her mother’s demands. But when she unlocks her great-grandmother’s abandoned art studio, she finds a legacy of a passionate artist and a French resistance fighter.

As Meredith relives the frozen December of her 1946 wedding, she understands her final mission isn’t to say goodbye to her old home, but to draw one last map—showing Grace how to navigate a life of her own making.

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About the author Liz Fenwick 

Liz Fenwick, dubbed ‘the queen of the Cornish contemporary novel’ by The Guardian,  is an award-winning author of emotional, immersive, feel-good fiction. Her books are filled with history, mystery and love. She loves stories that pull her into their world like they did when she was young so that’s what she writes.

When she’s not writing, she’s procrastinating on Instagram, plot walking, reading and painting. She lives in Cornwall with her husband and two mad cats.

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My Thoughts

I’m new to Liz Fenwick’s work, but based on my recent devouring of The Last Christmas, I’ve been missing out on some incredible storytelling.

I read this book over the course of a week, allowing it to keep me company in a couple of waiting rooms and on a fairly long car ride (no, I wasn’t driving). When I finished it, I didn’t want to leave Kestle behind or say goodbye to nonagenarian Meredith Tremayne Russell (aka Merry) and her American granddaughter, twenty-five-year-old Grace. Instead, I wanted to stay for Christmas dinner, toast myself by the fire where the Yule log was burning, and enjoy a couple of retro cocktails.

The story is set in 2012, making it quasi-contemporary, but the year matters less than the setting. Fenwick writes with such a vivid sense of place—particularly fitting when one of her main characters was a wartime cartographer—that I felt as though I were experiencing the streets of Cornwall (including Grace’s dreaded double traffic circle) and the chilly December weather myself.

I appreciated the alternating points of view between Merry and Grace, and especially the way Grace’s dyslexia was woven into the story rather than mentioned once and forgotten. Merry, meanwhile, is a wonderful blend of wistful nostalgia and the raw practicality that comes from being ninety-eight years old. Both women feel fully realized, and their relationship gives the story much of its warmth.

The supporting characters are equally delightful, an assortment of helpful neighbors and old friends who make Kestle feel like a place where people have lived and loved for generations. Not all the relationships are so comfortable, however. Merry and Grace each have a fraught relationship with the same woman: Merry’s daughter, who is also Grace’s mother. For Merry, the distance is marked by a lack of communication, while Grace’s relationship with her mother is one of open contention, fueled by the weight of academic expectations. Grace finally stands up for herself, declaring, “I have a very good brain, just not an academic one, so back off.” It’s a satisfying moment, and one that speaks to the novel’s larger themes of family, identity, and finding one’s own way.

If certain elements of the plot felt predictable (no spoilers here!), that didn’t detract from the overall reading experience. It was the journey that mattered, and the journey of this book was beautifully mapped.

Goes well with: A pink gin followed by proper fish and chips, preferably in a riverfront pub on a chilly late-autumn evening.

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