Family Likeness

By: Caitlin Davies

Narrated by: Penelope Rawlins, Vivien Rochester

In a small Kent town in the 1950s, a bewildered little girl is growing up. Ostracised because of her colour, she tries her best to fit in, but nobody wants anything to do with her.

A nanny climbs the steps of a smart London address. She’s convinced that her connection to the family behind the door is more than professional.

And on the walls of an English stately home, amongst the family portraits, hangs an eighteenth-century oil painting of a mysterious black woman in a silk gown.

In ways both poignant and unexpected, the three lives are intertwined in a heartbreaking story of prejudice and motherless children, of chances missed, of war time secrets and the search for belonging...

Critic reviews

A beautiful story of family and loss. Haunting and compelling. (Lisa Jewell)

A quickly engaging domestic mystery … gently ingenious

Davies is an unfussy and intelligent storyteller with a gift for translating the complexities of ordinary lives into novelistic form

This moving tale of life-long searches and accountability will pull at the heart strings

An absorbing, beautifully-written and very topical novel … Part mystery-novel, part historical, it is both readable and entertaining. (Amanda Craig, author of Hearts and Minds)

Family Likeness is a story of prejudice, war, secrets and the search to belong, which follows parallel stories of a child growing up in 18th century Kenwood House, and another in a 1950s children’s home.

A thoughtful and involving look at the social consequences of race and illegitimacy and how one’s need for a place to belong never really goes away. (Sarah Johnson)

A suspenseful novel. Muriel’s story, infused with the sadness of growing up not knowing why her parents abandoned her, has a ripple effect throughout the lives of the other characters ... culminating is some remarkable and moving scenes.

Family Likeness is a fascinating story, and a moving exploration of issues of race, family and belonging.

A mix of compelling family story, exquisite historical detail and layers of mystery, this is a very satisfying novel indeed. One of this summer’s must reads!