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The Daffodil Days
- Author
- Helen Bain
- Narrator
- Finty Williams
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date
- 12 March 2026
- Run Time
- 9 hours 49 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
'Beautiful, affecting and deeply impressive' Louise Kennedy, author of Trespasses
In the early 1960s, in a small town near Dartmoor, the church bells ring. The people of North Tawton go about their days, catching glimpses of one another’s lives.
There’s the local GP, who knows more about his patients than he would sometimes prefer. There’s the young shop assistant at Kestrels, who understands that the ladies who come there for a new outfit sometimes hope to find a new self. There’s the tenant farm labourer who rings the tower bells at the church three times a week, the notes – harmonious and clashing – rippling out across the rooftops of the town.
Amid all these lives, a young couple move into focus. New to the town with their small daughter, they have escaped London for a quieter existence in the thatched house beside the church, Court Green. The life they intend to build here – out of fresh lino tiles, second-hand furniture painted with hearts and flowers, and expertly-cooked suppers for weekend guests – will be a good and happy one.
The Daffodil Days depicts a pivotal year in the marriage of 20th-century literature’s most infamous couple, witnessed by the people they lived among. It is a kaleidoscopic portrait of this enigmatic pair, refracted through the rich inner lives of a rural community caught – if only for a moment – in their light.
Critics Review
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Beautiful, affecting and deeply impressive, this is an ingeniously constructed novel, told slant. I loved it.
Louise Kennedy, author of TRESPASSES
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An exceptional novel, with shades of Hilary Mantel. Helen Bain takes the familiar and makes it utterly new. I loved it. I miss it
Meg Mason, author of SORROW AND BLISS
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A luminous, deeply researched debut, The Daffodil Days reimagines Sylvia Plath's Court Green period through a chorus of village voices – letting the known story fall away until what remains feels bracingly human and close. Helen Bain's prose is exact and alive, and the novel builds with a quietly devastating inexorable force you can't look away from
Paula McLain, author of THE PARIS WIFE
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A pointillistic, unsentimental, and intimate portrait of Sylvia Plath through the eyes of those whose lives she brushed up against in rural Devon. Bain renders Plath’s humor, wit, resilience, and heartbreak from new angles, at once strange and familiar. Not a word is out of place. Full of understated lyricism and a deep respect for Plath and her world, The Daffodil Days is an exquisite and spellbinding debut
Heather Clark, author of Red Comet
See more reviews See fewer reviews
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Helen Bain has produced something quietly miraculous. The Daffodil Days brings the characters in a rural community to life in a way that evokes Andrew Miller’s A Land in Winter ... the depth of Bain’s meticulous, loving research is never obtrusive. It’s a captivating debut: a compassionate, perceptive and truly wonderful book
Miranda Seymour
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You would be forgiven for thinking that there was little left to say about their time in Devon that has not already been said; but by coming at its subject from the viewpoints of others, this virtuoso, deeply researched and utterly convincing debut achieves something quite extraordinary
Guardian
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Told through shifting viewpoints, this fictionalised account of the period leading up to Plath’s tragic death is utterly compelling
i Paper
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Stunning
Good Housekeeping
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A beautifully achieved story of daily and extraordinary life
Sainsbury's
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A love letter to Dartmoor, and to the writer who lived there, Bain’s is a smart debut that sheds new light on one of our most enigmatic creatives
The Bookseller
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Bain’s style is both old-fashioned and radical … A cleverly quiet, unassuming novel about two people who were anything but
Daily Mail
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I adored this novel. It’s beautifully written, intricately plotted, wears the precision of its research lightly, and is exquisitely moving. A very special book
Lucy Caldwell
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Bain brings Sylvia to life with extraordinary skill… it's exquisitely written
Country and Townhouse
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Bain deftly employs her vast research with prose that feels tactful, subtle and assured. Readers familiar with Plath and Hughes will delight in the additional layers of meaning … A quiet, richly drawn debut about the small-town folks who orbited the 20th century’s most famous literary couple
Kirkus Reviews
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One of the many pleasures of this book is the complex, multi-faceted, picture that it creates of the period … Thoroughly recommended
Historical Novel Society
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Penned by British author Helen Bain, this poignant debut is based on extremely well-researched facts. Equally whimsical and revealing, The Daffodil Days unveils Plath’s untimely unravelling in a new and truly unique way
Your Time
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A breathtaking first novel: elegant, insightful, meticulously crafted, and ingeniously structured. Helen Bain has achieved something remarkable here, demythologizing what we think we know about Sylvia Plath through the glancing perspectives of the figures in her orbit. These incidental characters are rendered with as much richness and complexity as Plath's, and their entanglement is captivating
Benjamin Wood, Booker Prize-longlisted author of SEASCRAPER
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Helen Bain explores Sylvia Plath's life in reverse while also, cleverly and masterfully, foreshadowing future events ... Simply delicious
Peter K. Steinberg, editor of THE PROSE OF SYLVIA PLATH
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Wonderfully accomplished ... A kaleidoscopic yet nuanced portrait of an insecure, ambitious perfectionist, a writer whose hypersensitivity is both the source of her talent and her fatal flaw
New York Times Book Review
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For the Plath aficionado, Easter eggs abound ...The Daffodil Days succeeds at keeping Plath alive in our minds for another day and from an entirely new direction
Washington Independent Review of Books
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Helen Bain
- Narrator
- Finty Williams
- Duration
- 9 hours 49 minutes
- Release Date
- 12 March 2026
- ISBN
- 9781037203855
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Genre
- Fiction: literary and general non-genre, Historical fiction
Synopsis
Bloomsbury presents The Daffodil Days by Helen Bain, read by Finty Williams'Beautiful, affecting and deeply impressive' Louise Kennedy, author of TrespassesIn the early 1960s, in a small town near Dartmoor, the church bells ring. The people of North Tawton go about their days, catching glimpses of one another’s lives.There’s the local GP, who knows more about his patients than he would sometimes prefer. There’s the young shop assistant at Kestrels, who understands that the ladies who come there for a new outfit sometimes hope to find a new self. There’s the tenant farm labourer who rings the tower bells at the church three times a week, the notes – harmonious and clashing – rippling out across the rooftops of the town.Amid all these lives, a young couple move into focus. New to the town with their small daughter, they have escaped London for a quieter existence in the thatched house beside the church, Court Green. The life they intend to build here – out of fresh lino tiles, second-hand furniture painted with hearts and flowers, and expertly-cooked suppers for weekend guests – will be a good and happy one.The Daffodil Days depicts a pivotal year in the marriage of 20th-century literature’s most infamous couple, witnessed by the people they lived among. It is a kaleidoscopic portrait of this enigmatic pair, refracted through the rich inner lives of a rural community caught – if only for a moment – in their light.
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