IVY AND JOE
Jane Schorah
All Rights: The bks Agency
A darkly comic reading-group debut - The Bee Sting meets Victoria Wood.
1980, Manchester. Resigned to a life packing boxes in a factory, belligerent Ivy Cross visits a psychic. He makes some bizarre predictions, promises a mysterious stranger and Ivy draws three death cards from the tarot deck. All-in-all, not worth the five quid, except that days later, her mistake of a husband is killed in a gruesome accident at work.
The compensation is Ivy’s leg up the social ladder: she buys a diamond necklace for £9.99, some shares in her factory on a promise of an admin job and a two-up-two-down to share with her odd, loner son. She aspires to have Laura Ashely blinds, like the snooty office secretary, but has to settle for Barbara's constant put-downs that make Ivy feel shop-soiled.
1980, Bologna. Giuseppe Zanichelli is stuck in a loveless marriage, working in the store his parents left him. His world is blown apart when he finds himself clawing for survivors in wreckage caused by a terrorist bomb. He flees to England to escape the horrific memories and leave his beloved son a better life. Whilst waiting tables at a restaurant, a chance encounter leads to an office job at Ivy’s factory, delivering to Ivy the mysterious stranger the fortune teller promised.
Ivy sees Joe as her happy ever after. But women like her aren’t meant to have it easy: her son is hiding a terrible secret in the outhouse; Joe’s trauma is corroding his insides; the son he left behind resents him. If Ivy is to have a life like posh Barbara, , she’s going to have to take fate into her own hands. And before you know it, one murder leads to another…
Ivy and Joe is a darkly comic and frequently heart-breaking family saga with a surprisingly high body count. Debut novelist Jane Schorah has created an utterly compelling and at times completely monstrous heroine in Ivy, whose steely determination sees her rise from her northern working-class background with an unapologetic ferocity as she bulldozes her way to wealth and success. It’s a novel about the tragedy of loving or not being loved, fathers and sons, ruthless ambition and murder; but above all, about destiny skulking in the shadows waiting to ruin a happy ending.
Originally from Lancashire, Jane Schorah has lived in Italy for over 23 years where she is a dual-qualified solicitor/avvocato in the corporate M&A team of an international law firm.
Jane has a long list of accomplishments under her belt: first published in the local newspaper at the age of 8, her poem about oranges won top prize - (she was gutted to learn it was a year’s supply of oranges); at 11 she accidently came first in the neat dive during an inter-county swimming contest (must be all that vitamin C). At 21 she hitch-hiked through Europe for six weeks on just £100, living on french fries and skirting death at least twice. As a student, she did stints in a factory in NW England, as a nanny in Germany and as a tour guide in Greece, Italy and Tunisia. She has also co-authored a legal dictionary.
Having decided stand-up comedy is out of the question on grounds she'll never have comic timing in the Italian language, she dedicated herself to writing Ivy and Joe, her debut novel. She is currently working on the sequel.
Jane enjoys reading and writing, loves animals and sneaks Oxo cubes into classic Italian dishes.