Yorkshire author's follow up to hit debut The Miseducation of Evie Epworth moves Evie's story on ten years

A warm, witty and often very moving coming-of-age story about love, loss, grief, guilt and the importance of family and friendship, its themes certainly struck a chord. Set in the early 1960s on a farm in rural East Yorkshire, its central character was 16-year-old Evie living with her widowed father and, on the cusp of womanhood, trying to decide what to do with her life.

Now Taylor, who was raised in Yorkshire but lives in London, has followed this up with the equally charming sequel All About Evie, published last month, which takes Evie’s story on a decade. It is 1972 and as the novel opens Evie, now aged 26, is working at the BBC at Broadcasting House as a production assistant on Woman’s Hour. The first book was so well-received – the publication dates for both the hardback and paperback were brought forward, it was selected for BBC Radio 2’s Book Club and the Richard & Judy Book Club – that when Taylor began work on the sequel it was not without some trepidation.

“It did all put a bit more pressure on me,” he says. “Obviously, I was delighted that the first book was so popular and people had responded to it so warmly. To hear them talking about it with such affection was really magical. I couldn’t imagine a better response. People were comparing it to Alan Bennett, Sue Townsend and Victoria Wood and my head can’t get round that because they are absolute heroes of mine.”

He says that he felt “paralysed with fear” for about a week, but found a way to dispel that by approaching the second book in the same way he approached the first. “I wrote Evie to cheer myself up and enjoy the love of writing, so I thought to myself ‘I’ll just do that’. I forgot about the pressure and wrote things that made me laugh or smile or go a bit teary. I went to stay with my dad in Yorkshire for what turned out to be six months, because of Covid, and it really took off.” In fact, most of All About Evie was written up in Yorkshire during the various lockdowns that we experienced over the past couple of years. “I loved it – I was waking up at 5 in the morning to write, I couldn’t wait to get started and spend time with Evie again.”

In his ‘day job’ Taylor works as a design historian and an academic writing tutor – and his knowledge about the fashions and look of the 1970s comes through in the narrative’s fine attention to detail.

“I loved doing the research,” he says. “I am interested in the idea of decades, their characteristics and how they blend into each other. 1972 is seen a bit like the death of the idealism of the 1960s – it must have been quite strange for people who came of age in the 60s, they had all been such trailblazers, and I wanted to explore that.”

Like its predecessor All About Evie is, says Taylor, “a funny book about serious things”. He hopes it will make people laugh, and cry, and that readers will enjoy being in Evie’s company again. “I think it is Evie’s voice that people respond to,” he says. “There is an energy and optimism about her.”

Review

All About Evie by Matson Taylor

Published by Simon & Schuster

Yvette Huddleston 4/5

Matson Taylor’s follow up to his hugely successful debut novel The Miseducation of Evie Epworth is a delightful read.

The free-spirited teenager we met in the first book, living on farm in rural East Yorkshire in the early 1960s, is now an ambitious twentysomething living in London and working at the BBC as a production assistant. The year is 1972. Things go spectacularly awry for Evie early on in the story when she is fired after an incident involving Princess Anne, a pregnancy test and a Hornsea Pottery mug. Evie has to find a new job and at 26 she wonders if she might be too old for that, on top of which her less than successful love life is making her think she could end up being a lonely spinster. She nevertheless manages to remain positive, talking her way in to a job as listings editor at arts magazine Right On! the place to find out ‘what’s going down in London town.’ Having come of age in the 1960s, she is facing the challenges of the 1970s with the help of older, more experienced friends Caroline and Digby and is inspired by new young friend Genevieve, a bright 16-year-old fashionista from Yorkshire who reminds her of her younger self.

Taylor’s writing is sublime, effortlessly combining humour with pathos and spot-on period detail while sensitively exploring themes such as loss, grief, love and death. It’s sure to be another hit.