BOOK REVIEW: The Shoe Seller's Daughter
Set in 1950s Cleveleys, the moving tale of a shoe seller’s daughter and her struggle to overcome prejudice in a male-dominated profession. WARNING: This review may contain loafers. The Shoe Seller’s Daughter is the third in J.R.R. Withers hugely unsuccessful series of footwear novels which began with A Tale of Two Slippers and was followed by To Kill A Moccasin . Fourteen years on from the events of Moccasin we find Iain Smithers’ daughter Clarabelle has come of age and is preparing to take over the family business, but she has a rival in the form of her evil uncle Clark Startrite who believes a woman has no place in the shoe trade and wishes to take over his brother’s business himself. Withers appears to have taken on board criticism of his previous works, that they were “disturbingly shoe-obsessed” (Times) and “entirely lacking in coherent prose” (Independent). Blackpool’s Evening Gazette was slightly kinder with their review when they said his previous work “reads