"Under The Jewelled Sky"

Born in the Sixties to an Indian mother and an English jazz musician father, Alison McQueen grew up in London and worked in advertising for twenty-five years before retiring to write full time.

She applied the Page 69 Test to Under The Jeweled Sky, her 7th novel, and reported the following:

Under The Jewelled Sky is a tragic tale of love and loss set in the dying embers of the British Raj. The story unravels the fragile construct of a severely dysfunctional British family posted out to a Maharaja’s palace and watches its slow disintegration in the wake of World War II and the subsequent partition of India.

Page 69 gives away nothing of the Indian story, or of the tale to come. It is set in the second strand of the novel, in 1957 London, and our heroine, Sophie, is considering a marriage proposal from ambitious British diplomat, Lucien. Here, she is speaking to her friend Margie, in the days when nobody talked openly about sex.

“I’m assuming you’ve been to bed together?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“How Victorian. I wouldn’t dream of marrying a man without going to bed with him first, otherwise how could you know whether you’re compatible? If you wait until after the wedding, you might find out that he’s not up to it at all. Can you imagine how miserable that would be?”

And it turns out to be very miserable indeed. The bad marriage is merely the tip of the iceberg, leading to a series of events that takes Sophie from London to India to America and back again in the search for her inescapable destiny.

Learn more about the book and author at Alison McQueen's website.

My Book, The Movie: Under The Jewelled Sky.

--Marshal Zeringue