Tag: feel good fiction

Book Review: The Radio Hour by Victoria Purman – a feel-good story taking you behind the scenes of a 1950s radio drama

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

I was instantly charmed by The Radio Hour and soon drawn into the world of its main character, Martha Berry. About to turn 50, Martha’s been working at ABC, the big, state-owned Australian broadcasting corporation, for decades and knows all the ins and outs of radio production.

Shunted from department to department, Martha’s always been there when another secretary has left to get married – there are no married women at ABC. She’s sensible, pragmatic and knowledgeable – everything her new boss isn’t. That’s Quentin Quinn, fresh-faced and twenty-something, on his first ever radio serial, As the Sun Sets.

Radio dramas of this kind were popular entertainment for those at home – often a break in the housewife’s busy day, the stories and characters adored equally. But waiting in the wings is a threat to this happy status quo – television. Quinn is soon out of his depth. He’d much rather be writing an action show with cops and robbers, not a soap following the lives of a butcher, his wife and daughter and the people who step into the shop.

Quinn starts the day late, spends long lunches out drinking and leaves early, while the first airing of As the Sun Sets looms closer and there’s still no script. What’s Martha supposed to do? A fond reader of the classics, Martha knows a thing or two about storylines and characters, to say nothing of the things that women at home worry about. She’s well liked by her mother’s friends and joins their conversations on the verandah when she returns from work. And then there’s April, May and June, the three young secretaries she befriends at ABC. She lends an ear to their worries and they welcome her advice.

Martha’s led a quiet life at home with her widowed mother and has never pushed herself forward for anything. But once’s she’s helped select the cast and booked the recording studio, she can’t let the show down. Before you know it Martha is writing for As the Sun Sets, pretending to an increasingly drunk-on-the-job Quinn that the scripts are all his work – she’s just typing them up.

When Martha received her pay envelope, her name typed neatly on the front (Berry, Martha, Miss), she would thank Trevor with a smile, return to her desk, and slip the envelope into her handbag.
It was only later that night, after dinner at the dining table, that she would divide her money into piles for the household (groceries and bills), savings (one pound each week, which she could manage because she and her mother weren’t paying rent), and sundries. Martha would never think of them as luxuries – luxuries were fur coats and silk scarves and handmade shoes – but she liked having a little left over to buy the Women’s Weekly every Wednesday, the personal items she needed from the chemist, new stockings when hers could no longer be repaired without looking shabby, a small bag of candies for a Saturday evening treat for her mother, and the occasional cinema ticket for herself.

On the surface The Radio Hour is a light, feel-good read, and it captures so well the 1950s era and values. But the casual misogyny dished out on a daily basis to the female staff, the sexist management structure and the predatory behaviour of some of the men towards the young women in their midst will make your blood boil. How Martha and her female colleagues fight back gives the story something to cheer about, but you know it’s going to be a long haul.

Victoria Purman has obviously done some homework and references real people as background figures, such as, Gwen Meredith, a well-known writer of radio drama and role model for Martha, and the ‘had enough’ character, Joyce Wiggins is inspired by real-life producer Joyce Belfrage. The author even worked at ABC in her early career as a journalist, though quite some time after the events of her novel. This all shines through in a story that brims with authenticity and interesting radio production detail.

I enjoyed The Radio Hour immensely. I loved Martha and her friends and will certainly look out for more by this author – she’s got quite a backlist of historical fiction. I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. The Radio Hour is a four-star read from me.

Book Review: The Library by Bella Osborne – a feel-good read about an unlikely friendship and a library in trouble

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

A public library can be one of those places that offer a respite from the anxieties of everyday life. And while they’re not the silently bookish places they used to be, hosting community groups, classes and story times, they can still be a place of refuge in a way a shopping mall just isn’t. Bella Osborne has taken this idea to create a story around two lonely people and a friendship that develops at the library.

Maggie is seventy-two, a widow who runs a small holding on the outskirts of town. It’s a lonely life but she fills it with her love for her livestock, yoga and books. Her membership of a book group that meets every Saturday is the highlight of her week. Sixteen-year-old Tom is struggling to keep everything together at home where he lives with an alcoholic father. It’s a battle to make ends meet, and his dad wants him to give up school to join him at the factory – they could use the extra wages. But Tom has his sights on a better life, and Farah, a cute girl, if only she’d look his way.

Tom has as an odd idea that Farah uses the library and visits on the pretext of choosing some romance books for his mother. Soon he’s lugging home a pile of books he has no intention of reading. Maggie gets mugged outside the library on her way to her bus-stop and Tom helps her to her feet. Over time an unlikely friendship forms and Tom discovers the wonders of reading, farm life and finally has someone supportive in his life. Maggie has a glimpse of what having a family of her own might have looked like and feels less alone.

They sat side by side on the cool metal seats and waited for the bus. ‘I think this week’s book club read will be more up my street.’
He was looking about. He seemed to have lost interest in her. She got the book out anyway and showed it to him.
‘The Fault in Our Stars.’ He nodded. ‘You might like it,’ she said. He nodded again before realising his mistake.
‘Nah. Doubt it.’ Tom looked away.
‘It’s okay, Tom. The others don’t know and I won’t be telling them.’
‘Know what?’ He pulled his shoulders back and stared her down.
‘That it’s you reading the books and not your mum.’
His shoulders sagged with every word, until he was back to his rounded-shoulder posture. ‘How’d you know?’
‘The way you read the blurbs before choosing the books. The conversation about Me Before You.’ She gave a shrug. ‘I’m a bit like a dog with a bone when something doesn’t add up.’
He turned to look up the road for the bus, as if willing it to arrive, but there was ages yet. ‘Well done, Miss Marple.’

When the town council announces plans to shut their library down, Maggie reignites the feisty young woman she was in the sixties, demonstrating at marches, holding placards and making a nuisance of herself. She ropes in young Tom and her book club pals, but it’s an uphill battle when the library door-count has probably been dropping for decades. But as the Joni Mitchell song goes: “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” and a library is more than just books, it can be the heart of a community.

You can guess how the story will pan out, but there are a few surprises along the way. Maggie is hiding a secret, and so is Tom’s dad. Meanwhile Tom’s issues with his father add complexity as he faces extra pressure when he needs to focus on study if he has any hope of university. But it’s the humour in the odd little mishaps and misunderstandings that makes this a fun read. Maggie and Tom’s friendship is not always plain sailing so there’s some tension there too. Plus, there are puppies.

The Library is a light but engaging read, and anyone who has a fondness for libraries will relate to the characters and their campaign. There’s plenty of book talk too, especially when Tom, with nothing better to do, discovers that romantic fiction is a whole lot better than he expected. This is a warm, feel-good sort of story, cheering and heartfelt and a four-star read from me.

Book Review: The Librarianist by Patrick DeWitt – a quirky and heartfelt novel with a memorably unmemorable main character

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Working in a library, of course I was drawn to this book, with its cover showing an old-fashioned library book date-slip. But what the heck is a librarianist? How did that one slip past me, of all people? I just had to find out.

Bob Comet is the librarianist of the title, an everyman kind of character who has always lived for books. Maybe that’s what librarianist means. He is described as “not unhappy” and seventy-one years of age, a solitary man who fills his days with simple pleasures, such as reading, cooking, and walking.

We catch up with Bob in 2005 when he rescues an elderly woman he bumps into at a 7-Eleven, where he’s gone for coffee. The young cashier doesn’t know what to do with her; she’s been staring at the chilled drinks fridge for getting on for an hour. Bob reads a label attached to her clothing and discovers her name is Chip. He manages to get her home to a care facility and before you know it he’s a volunteer, expanding his world and getting to know the residents.

A coincidence at the care facility occurs that shocks Bob and propels the story back to Bob’s youth. We’re back in the 1940s and 50s when Bob’s love of books begins. You get the impression that it is books that rescue Bob from the reality of the hurly-burly of school, his life at home with a mother that doesn’t understand him, and his general aloneness. He becomes a librarian, and takes on his mother’s house when she dies. You imagine a quiet, solitary, bookish life for Bob, and he does too. And then he meets Connie.

The book describes his relationship with Connie, similarly a person who doesn’t fit in but for quite different reasons. There’s also his sudden friendship with Ethan, who turns up at the library carpark one day, too afraid to go back to his apartment across the road, and the angry policeman inside it. Bob’s life has suddenly a friend and some romance in it – until suddenly it doesn’t.

Why read at all? Why does anyone do it in the first place? Why do I? There is the element of escape, which is real enough—that’s a real-enough comfort. But also we read as a way to come to grips with the randomness of our being alive. To read a book by an observant, sympathetic mind is to see the human landscape in all its odd detail, and the reader says to him or herself, Yes, that’s how it is, only I didn’t know it to describe it. There’s a fraternity achieved, then: we are not alone. Sometimes an author’s voice is familiar to us from the first page, first paragraph, even if the author lived in another country, in another century.” Bob held up his stack of Russians. “How can you account for this familiarity? I do believe that, at our best, there is a link connecting us.

But before we catch up with Bob in 2006 again, where the story left off, there’s an odd chunk of the novel that takes us back to 1945 and an eleven-year-old Bob running away from home. Where he gets to and the people he meets makes for an entertaining enough interlude, full of memorable characters, but I couldn’t help asking myself what it was all about. I couldn’t help wondering why it didn’t seem to have an impact on the Bob we meet later, who returns home eventually, remarkably unchanged. Years later, however, he sometimes wistfully dreams about the seaside hotel that took him in for four days..

The Librarianist might not follow the usual rules for novel plotting in some ways, and the ending is perhaps a little odd, too. But it’s a diverting read, and you can’t help getting to like Bob and the people we meet as seen through his eyes. Patrick DeWitt’s prose is delightful, witty, wry and perceptive, bringing Bob and his times to life.

The novel reminded me a little of some of Anne Tyler’s earlier fiction with its characters that don’t fit in, and the events that pull them out of their lethargy or solitary habits. I’ve always got time for a novel like this, particularly if it’s as nicely written as this one. I’ll pick up another DeWitt novel sometime, I’m sure. The Librarianist is a four-star read from me.

Book Review: All Together Now by Gill Hornby – a heart-warming read full of quirky characters, humour and song

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

Sometimes all you really want is a nice, “feel-good” novel – something to chase away the darker clouds of a difficult day. The best of them will have characters you’ll warm to, a plot with a few surprises and an emotional pull – tears or laughter, either way, I’m not fussy.

I haven’t been in a choir since school, but still remember the whoosh you get when a lot of people get together and harmonise in song. Gill Hornby brings her joy for choral singing into her story about a struggling choir in a dead-end town. All Together Now follows the lives of three main characters: socially-awkward Bennett, once a choir boy and now, recently single again, he’s at a loose end; librarian Annie who does all the donkey work for the choir as a way of dealing with her “empty nest”; and Tracey, who is too cool for choirs, but can really belt out a number in the privacy of her home. Tracey also has a burning secret.

The story starts off with a car accident that leaves the Bridgeford Community Choir rudderless, its choirmaster hospitalised and in a coma. There’s a county choral championship up for grabs, and a town in dire need of invigorating – but can a medley from The Sound of Music or The Carpenters be the answer?

Tracey spots the choir performing outside the station one day and it makes her cringe. She’s one of life’s soloists. When her layabout son of twenty-two goes out to work one evening, she suddenly feels liberated. She dusts off her old music collection and begins to sing. A knock on the door and there’s someone she recognises; it’s Lewis from the choir, surprisingly also a neighbour, who rather than demanding Tracey turn it down a bit, implores her to join their choir.

Tracey became aware that, rather than the raspy, throaty one that she used when she was singling along with Billy, she was using her chest voice for once, and she could feel the calming, anti-depressant effect it had on her stressed-out body. But it wasn’t until she was back in the living room, tucked up with her glass and the bottle on the sofa, that she realised exactly what it was she was singing. Christ almighty. Those bloody belters had wormed into her ear, through to her brain, down to her lungs. They had regressed her. She was regressing. For the first time in nearly thirty years, she was spending the night in alone pretending to be Karen bloody Carpenter. How sad was that?

The story follows the lives of Annie, Tracey and Bennett in parallel to the struggling choir that might just save them all. Tracey finds she’s not such a soloist after all, in the choir or in life; Bennett steps up to help save the town, and proves to his kids that he’s almost kinda cool; Annie takes a hard look at her marriage and makes a surprising discovery. And the choir gets a bit better. It’s an uplifting tale, but it’s also full of laughs and dry wit, particularly in the way the characters bounce off each other, disagree but also sing together. There are some amusing and some discordant minor characters that give the plot a bit of tension.

The story is peppered with music – the lines of songs nicely mixed in the scenes describing the choir in rehearsal so you have a sense of how it all sounds. Most of the songs are pretty familiar, but in case you don’t know them there’s a handy play-list of at the back and even a Spotify link so you can hear them as well.

All Together Now really hits the spot for a big-hearted, cheering sort of read, more character driven than a gripping page-turner, the prose bright and witty. I’ll probably not be rushing off to join a choir anytime soon, but will happily curl up on the sofa with another book by Gill Hornby. This one’s a four-star read from me.

Book Review: The Wakes by Dianne Yarwood – a thoughtful, contemporary read about life, death and catering

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So we’re back in ‘feel-good fiction’ territory with a novel mostly about Clare, whose husband has had a kind of conniption and decided to leave their marriage. She becomes unhinged by this and takes some long service leave, and this coincides with her meeting a new neighbour, Louisa, who has plans for a catering business centred on funerals. Clare is persuaded to help out – she’s always been a dab hand in the kitchen and her chicken sandwiches are to die for – ha, ha!

Louisa is a larger-than-life character – tall and funny as well as kind. She’s soon in and out of Clare’s kitchen when Clare needs a friend. An accident that has left her face bruised and her front teeth chipped has confined Clare to her home. We find out that Louisa’s bouncy, chatty manner hides a secret heartache.

The story flips to Chris and his own marriage break-up – a relationship that has turned sour when he and his wife found they were unable to conceive. He thinks back to his relationship with Beth when he was in London – was she his one great love? He determines to find out if she is still in Australia – he has a box of her things he’d like to return. Chris is also no stranger to death, being an ER doctor, and it is this that brings about his first meeting with Clare at the caterers’ very first wake.

Clare worked at a very fast pace. It wasn’t until people began streaming through the doors that Louisa admitted how uncomfortable she felt around crowds. Somehow, stupidly, she’d thought mourners would be different. Quieter, less of a strain on her sensibilities. But not so. The opposite, really – all those families. She disappeared into the kitchen as the room filled up. I’ll hold the fort in there, she said with a look of concern and apology. And so Clare moved around the room in something approaching a run: she hovered by groups, raced off to the kitchen, came back, checked on what people had, offered plates and darted off again.

The Wakes makes you aware of the idea that “in the midst of life we are in death” in that it is the passing of loved ones and the proximity of death that makes the characters feel aware of the wonders of life. That we only have one and we must seize the day. But there’s also a lot about the complexities of friendship. Chris’s great friend is Max, who is dying; there are other friends – particularly Paul, who was also in London during the Beth era.

Paul has his own chapters, too, and his role in the story is important as a catalyst for what happens. Paul’s a kind of counterpart for Louisa in that he’s always quick with the ready wit and can rattle off a vast selection of pop culture references at any given opportunity. But Paul’s life is an empty shell. We are not really supposed to like. him – he works in advertising – but I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. Chris, as an ER doctor, is obviously more worthy.

Perhaps it was these moral undertones that put me off the book a little. That and the funerals. It is difficult to balance the weight of grief with that of the hopeful resolutions that we wish for the characters. Sometimes it just got a bit too much. Or was it just that I liked the more light-hearted scenes better? Perhaps if I’d just lost someone dear to me, I’d have found the book more relatable. The Wakes is a three-star read from me.

Book Review: Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt – a heart-warming debut that will have you cheering

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I had no idea what to expect with this novel, which includes among its three main narrators an octopus. Marcellus the GPO (great Pacific octopus) inhabits a tank at an aquarium where he has a good view of humanity as it comes to peer at him. He may be missing sea life in the raw, but he’s learnt a lot about people, their weird sense of humour, their ugly eating habits, their lack of perspicacity. He hasn’t a lot of respect for the human race as a whole, but forges a bond with Tova, the seventy-year-old cleaner who each evening wipes the smears from the glass of his enclosure and at one point rescues him from disaster.

Tova is at a crossroads. She has been recently widowed but still rattles around in the house her Swedish father built, which is full of memories. The loss of her son at the age of eighteen is something she’s learnt to live with, if only she could understand what happened on the night he disappeared. Her friends think it’s time for her to find somewhere smaller, but maybe it’s time to think about a retirement home. After all there’s no one to take care of her when she gets too old to manage herself. However, the chatty Scot, Ethan, who runs the local store would be very sorry to see her go.

Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometres away, in California, Cameron is in a bad way. At thirty, he can’t seem to hold down a job, his Jeep has been repossessed and he seems to be running out of chances with his girlfriend. He’s bitter and resentful, still smarting since his mother abandoned him when he was nine. When his Auntie Jeanne gives him a box of his mother’s things, a lack of options has him heading north to Washington State in search of his father. With luck he’s the wealthy property developer Simon Brinks and Cameron can touch him for year’s of child support.

Over the course of the novel, all four characters’ stories collide and Cameron, Ethan, Tova and even Marcellus will help each other get to the truth. It isn’t difficult to guess what’s going on and the author uses dramatic irony to keep the reader turning the pages. You want to shout at the characters, especially Cameron, who has a lot of growing up to do, but also Tova, telling them not to be so hasty, or have another look at that clue. Marcellus is in the same boat as us, figuring things out long before the humans do, but then octopuses are remarkably bright creatures.

In an odd way Marcellus is the hero of the tory, and how Van Pelt makes this work is really charming. He’s a talented escapologist – just why are so many sea cucumbers disappearing? wonders his keeper – and a collector of glittering trifles. But time is not on his side and this adds to the tension.

Remarkably Bright Creatures is an altogether heart-warming read, well put-together with some interesting facts about sea creatures sprinkled through the story. I loved the North-West Pacific coastal setting, a fitting place for an aquarium, and the nosy but kindly locals. I’ll be looking out for Van Pelt’s next book. This one gets a four out of five from me.

Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce – a hymn to friendship and to the resourcefulness of women in a man’s world

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I’m often drawn to the scenarios described on the backs of Rachel Joyce’s books. But not really enjoying The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry half as much as everybody else seemed to, I haven’t read any further. But looking for an audiobook, I came across Miss Benson’s Beetle and seeing it was read by the truly splendid Juliet Stephenson, I couldn’t resist. Soon I was immersed in the story, set in the early 1950s London, where dowdy, middle-aged schoolteacher Margery Benson has an epiphany.

It doesn’t take much to tip a schoolteacher over the edge, and imagine being a home science teacher in the rationing years, poorly paid and a hopeless cook. She struggles to maintain engagement in a class of sniggering girls. When one student draws a cruel caricature of her, Margery can bear it no longer. She steals a pair of brand new lacrosse boots belonging to the deputy head and decides to embark on a long dreamt-of adventure: to travel to New Caledonia in search of a gold beetle. She had seen it mentioned in her late father’s beetle book, but it has yet to be collected, named and sent to the Natural History Museum.

Margery needs an assistant and advertises. Of the three who reply, the only possible contender does a reference check on Margery and changes her mind. Mrs Pretty can’t write a letter that makes sense; the disagreeable Mr Mundic wants to take over as expedition leader, ready with a gun to fight off savages – clearly he has a screw loose. At the last minute, desperate for anybody really, Marjory writes offering the position to Enid Pretty.

At the train station, the two take a while to recognise each other as Enid is dressed in a tight pink suit, a ridiculous hat and dainty sandals decorated with pompoms. And why does she clasp her red valise as if her life depends on it? Margery is dressed in an ancient shabby suit, the lacrosse boots and a pith helmet. Somehow they make their connection to the ship that will take them to Australia, in spite of Enid not having a passport.

The two make an odd couple, Edith, a former cocktail waitress seems to be running away from something, constantly looking over her shoulder as if she’s being followed. But she has the streetwise knack of acquiring by fair means or foul anything they might need. If only she would stop talking. An array of difficulties – sea sickness, lost luggage, a tropical cyclone and so much more – forges an unexpected friendship. Yet things aren’t quite so simple as finding a beetle and setting off for home again.

The story is full of madcap scenes, some poignant revelations and life-or-death challenges as both women slowly open up about their past lives and the things they are afraid of. There’s also quite a lot about beetles – Margery has become quite the expert. I also enjoyed some of the minor characters, particularly the British wives who are stuck in New Caledonia because their husbands are there on business or as diplomats.

Bubbling through it all is a wry humour. I came away feeling the book was a wonderful hymn to friendship, and to women surviving in a man’s world, a world that in the shadows of World War II is shown to capable of horrific cruelty. And I was quite right about Juliet Stephenson – her reading is superb, bringing to life the two main characters hilariously. I am sure the novel is a brilliant read in print, but I do recommend the audiobook too. Miss Benson’s Beetle earns a four out of five from me.

Book Review: The Kitchen Front by Jennifer Ryan – a wartime novel about friendship, rivalry and rationing

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

Jennifer Ryan cements her reputation for World War Two fiction about the women stuck at home with her third novel, The Kitchen Front. Her previous books, The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir and The Spies of Shilling Lane, similarly threw together unlikely allies and mined small-town prejudices, keeping up appearances and the difficulties of maintaining anything like normal life when there’s a war on.

Ryan has a knack for discovering interesting story threads in the archives of wartime social history and memoirs. Here she’s latched on to the concept of cooking competitions that encouraged housewives to make rationed ingredients stretch further and items like whale meat (ugh!) which weren’t rationed somehow palatable. Here we’ve four main characters each vying for a radio slot on The Kitchen Front hosted by fastidious bon-vivant, Ambrose Hart.

Lady Gwendoline Strickland seems a likely candidate as she already hosts wartime cooking demonstrations in Fenley Village Hall. But she doesn’t get all that much cooking practice in, having all the trappings of a manor house kitchen, a cook and kitchenmaid. And a wealthy husband – a not very nice wealthy husband, but still, she’s got a lot of clout.

Then there’s Audrey, Lady G’s sister, who is toughing it out as a war widow, raising three boys and keeping the wolf from the door by baking pies and cakes that sell locally. She barely makes ends meet, and to make matters worse, she’s in debt to her sister for a mortgage on her home, the home she and Gwendoline grew up in. Without the house and grounds, she wouldn’t have the garden and orchards for her ingredients. So Audrey’s under a lot of pressure.

Also in the running is the Stricklands’ cook, Mrs Quince, one of the most famous manor house cooks in the country. But Mrs Quince is getting on and relies heavily on Nell, the kitchenmaid, who’s been learning at the cook’s elbow ever since she left the orphanage at fourteen. The two enter Ambrose’s competition jointly, and Mrs Q encourages shy Nell to speak up and come out of her shell.

The final entrant is London chef, Zelda Dupont. Zelda (not her real name) has always been on struggle street, but has worked her way up to be sous chef at a top London Hotel. When it’s bombed and she finds herself jobless, alone and pregnant, she winds up in Fenley, overseeing the staff canteen at a pie factory. Few know she’s in the family way, although her landlady has twigged and makes her life hell. If her boss finds out, she’ll be out of work too. Winning the competition could save her bacon.

The competition nicely shapes the plot of the novel and Ryan throws in lots of recipes and wartime tips for making those rations go further (Sheep’s Head Roll, anybody?). But really, this is a story about friendship and family, about pulling together, facing up to the truth and making a go of things. It’s a lovely, warm-hearted story, with a couple of villains you love to hate, and a touch of romance. It has that feel-good factor in spades, but there’s enough humour to keep things from getting mawkish. A charming, relaxing read, getting a four out of five from me.

Book Review: The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley

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Book connections can be puzzling. What led me to seek out this novel was probably a recommendation in connection with another book I enjoyed, but what it was escapes me. This story similarly connects random characters, one leading onto the next.

It begins when elderly Julian leaves an exercise book in Monica’s café, with the title The Authenticity Project carefully lettered on the cover. Inside Julian describes his loneliness since his wife died, and how he lost friends and relationships, now going days without talking to anyone. He closes with the challenge to whoever picks up the book to ‘tell your truth’.

Monica does. She writes about her longing for a family, in particular, a husband and a baby. She’s in her late thirties and fears she’s left it too late. But Monica doesn’t just tell her truth, she decides to help Julian. She’s looked him up online and discovered he’s a once famous artist, and a minor celebrity in his day. Her plan is to weasel him out of his cave by advertising for an artist to teach drawing at her café. He regularly stops by for coffee, so is sure to see it. She leaves the exercise book in a bar where it is picked up by Hazard, a stock broker with addiction issues and so the story goes on.

Hazard is an interesting character in that he’s a really obnoxious on the one hand, but has the self-awareness to take himself off on a retreat to Thailand to detox. Perhaps a new Hazard hides beneath all that drug and alcohol fuelled brashness. The exercise book is just the trigger he needs. He’s read both Julian’s and Monica’s ‘truths’ and decides to help Monica from his tropical hideaway.

More characters join the chain. Happy-go-lucky, live-for-the-moment Riley, an Australian gardener, who doesn’t understand the English with all their hangups. New mother, Alice, who has a social media addiction, as well as the husband and baby Monica craves. But they don’t make her happy. They’re all interesting and entertaining in their way, although it’s Monica and Hazard who are the most engaging and complex, the ones who can’t make up their mind what they want or how to get it.

The Authenticity Project is a light and entertaining novel. The changing viewpoints work well because everyone is trying to fix things for others, creating dramatic tension, and a community of sorts emerges. It made me wish Monica’s café was just up the road so I could pop in, join an art class or curl up on a sofa with a book. The references to famous people of the eighties Julian used to hang out with, his designer wardrobe and old LP collection, add plenty of colour and I loved the Fulham setting. It’s a a feel-good kind of read, maybe just the thing for the holidays with an original, well-executed storyline. I’m giving this one a three and a half out of five.

Book Review: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

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Matt Haig writes the sort of books that get picked up for movies starring Benedict Cumberbatch (How to Stop Time is one, though still in development). The Midnight Library is the first I’ve read, but looking at his back catalogue, I can see the potential for screen adaptations in the stories he comes up with. They look original, life affirming, sometimes romantic and with a bit of philosophy thrown in. There’s that category, Speculative Fiction which might put you off if you’re not into sci-fi or fantasy. But on the other hand, this could be the Spec-Fic for you.

The Midnight Library is the story of Nora, once a promising young swimmer who, if her dad’d had his way, would have gone on to Olympic glory. She could have been a rock star too, if she hadn’t pulled out of her brother’s band, causing a rift between them that has continued to this day. Her life could have included a career in glaciology, helping save the planet with her studies on Arctic sea ice, or an academic career in philosophy. But somehow, at 35, Nora has hit rock bottom, losing her music store job, missing family and far-away friends and living in a grim flat in Bedford..

When her cat dies suddenly, Nora feels she is so worthless she tries to kill herself, but wakes up in the Midnight Library instead. Here, the librarian is Mrs Elm, a kindly figure Nora remembers from school, who shows Nora the Book of Regrets, and gives her the chance to start again, picking alternative life paths until she finds the one she wants to live. Each segment shows Nora in a new life story, but being dropped into a different life at the age of 35 and having to figure out what she has to do adds some interesting tension. Who are these people, she wonders, and what do I next?

The Midnight Library plays with the idea that if we could live our life again, what would we decide to do differently. Would we be happier? More fulfilled? It is peppered with very quotable quotations – Nora didn’t study philosophy at uni for nothing – and as such the book seems to be full of wisdom. When you’ve got to the end, you might find yourself thinking about your own life and its crossroads and turning points. The ultimate in personalised Spec-Fic, perhaps.

As Thoreau wrote, ‘It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.’ 

It’s a fun read though – like Nora, you don’t easily pick what will happen next – and there’s a smattering of humour. Though you realise fairly early on that there’s a moral to the novel, not your usual fictional resolution. I was at a writer’s conference recently when the presenter on novel structure reacted adversely to the suggestion that a novel should have a moral. But this one does and somehow avoids being too icky – though some might disagree.

I wouldn’t like to read a book like The Midnight Library too often. It’s a bit gimmicky and too many stories with philosophical meanderings would lessen the effect. However, sometimes a book like this is just the ticket and could be a tonic if you’re feeling stuck in a rut, or to spark a lively book group discussion. I can’t quite bring myself to give the novel a four, so it’s a three-and-a-half read from me.