Take a Chance on Me

Jill Mansell
Headline Review 2010, Paperback, 416 pages, £7.99

Take A Chance On Me is really enjoyable for about three chapters and then dips down into autopilot. Mansell makes an engaging male character (saddled with the hideous lothario name of Johnny LaVenture), makes him warm and witty and generally nice, and then makes him hop around until our heroine deigns to fall into his arms. I know this is always going to happen and it’s not rocket science, but it helps if the story along the way makes its fantasy vaguely realistic, and this may as well be actual Mamma Mia! instead, in which case God help us all.

Cleo is a 29-year-old school drop-out who still lives in the village where she was brought up. The school bullies called her Misa (“Me Sir!”) for being swotty and so she reacted by ploughing all her exams and eventually becoming a limo driver. One of these school bullies is the insanely hot LaVenture, who decides to spend the entire book grinning at Cleo, even though she’s a) failed to get over the fact he bullied her at school (a bit) b) never bothered to get those exams and c) spends the ENTIRE BOOK either being sulky or dragging him into her failed love life. The couple are given no build-up, there’s no momentum to their relationship beyond it suddenly being the last chapter and oh bollocks they really need to hurry up and get it on.

Anyway, there is another subplot involving a ghastly 18-year-old girl, a ridiculous husband and Cleo’s sister, and a further one involving Cleo’s radio star best friend and Cleo’s boyfriend’s ex-wife, but given that the only really good part of this book is the beginning, I’d say ditch it and read Perfect Timing instead which is on fire all the way through. This is just a bit meh.

No related posts.

Shop Girl Diaries (Salt Modern Lives)

Emily Benet
Salt Publishing 2009, Paperback, 256 pages, £9.99

Hurray for Twitter: I found out about this book, set in a shop close to where I live, through the @Se1 account. Even though it’s square-shaped. For some reason this really grinds my gears. I like books to be book-shaped, otherwise I feel like I’m reading an accordion or a copy of Meg and Mog. Also, I worry about dropping it in the bath.

Anyway, this is a lovely book, and one that proves slight isn’t a bad thing. Emily Benet works in her mother’s chandelier shop on Tower Bridge Road and chronicles their regulars, successful and dodgy haggles and her own love affair.

The half-Spanish Benet (you’ll wish you were half-Spanish too when you read about her trips to Spain and South American travels) writes beautifully, even though there’s not always lots to write about. This started life as a blog (which Benet still writes, to award-winning effect). It will be really interesting to see what her first novel will be like, because she writes with an irresistible combination of delicacy and sureness of touch that for some reason makes me think of the Cat in the story, and how it would write if it told the story of that time it looked at the King.

The story is slight – not a lot happens beyond Emily and her mum continually trying to close down their shop and failing thanks to their keen customers, and an occasional tangle in Emily’s relationship – but as a portrayal of life in London and a side to London you don’t necessarily get to see it has real charm. It works best of all as an introduction to a writer who is clearly going to do very exciting things with words and, hopefully book-shaped, books.

No related posts.

Among the Mad

Jacqueline Winspear
John Murray 2010, Paperback, 352 pages, £8.99

Anyway, it turns out the Kent-born Winspear is no such thing: she writes today, but now lives in California, where I hope she will soon develop soupy-eyes and a matronly attitude. And while Maisie Dodds is indeed set in the 1930s, it’s not fluffy and there’s very little 30s slang.

Maisie Dodds is a working class gel made good. Having been trained into investigations by her mentor Dr Maurice Blanche, she has taken over his practise and helps the police with their enquiries as well as her individual clients. Maisie is a rather uninspiring creation to follow, an unemotional woman with almost zen-like levels of self-control (at one point a man commits suicide via bomb in front of her and she barely raises an eyebrow). But Winspear puts in enough detail about Maisie’s past life to make this work as a stand-alone read as well as part of a series. The sheen soon comes off this zen once we find out that Maisie worked as nurse with shell-shocked soldiers during the First World War, slowly lost her lover to shell shock and suffered a breakdown herself a year before.

This works very well as an inbetween to Pat Barker’s infinitely harsher Regeneration trilogy and to Singled Out, Virginia Nicholson’s excellent biography of that generation of women destined to remain spinsters or build careers after their men were killed, or left mentally gone after the war. Among the Mad is a great idea for a mystery: fed up with the lack of attention given to former soldiers now that memories are healing over, someone is committing murder using the horrific chemicals and methods inflicted on them during the War.

While Winspear’s prose is more workmanlike than I’d ideally like and her characters don’t really leap off the page despite their interesting backstories, her story is efficient. Its focus on the forgotten soldiers of WW1 acts as a welcome counterpoint to the easy, lazy days the 1930s are usually painted as. There is also a bittersweet sideplot in which the wife of Maisie’s male assistant is sent to an asylum after the death of her young daughter, and suffers from what passed for mental health treatment. Luckily, a contact of Maisie’s is a senior physician at a more progressive hospital, and the wife is allowed to move there, but it’s a neat reminder that not everything was Mitfordian sunshine in the 1930s.

It’s a quick read, but one that will leave you thinking afterwards, not least because, in passing, Winspear drops some very interesting names I’d never heard of before: female policemen and a doctor who ran a women-only patrol of doctors in France during the war. Maddeningly, I left this book at my mum’s for her to read, so a bit of Googling is in order before I can remember their names. Not sure I’ll actively seek out Maisie Dodds books again – the storyline is good but there’s not much zing – but those names, definitely.

No related posts.

One Day

David Nicholls
Hodder Paperbacks 2010, Paperback, 448 pages, £7.99

And people will, and do, love One Day. Partly because that cheery orange and white cover is gracing every 3 for 2 stand in the United Kingdom and a 3 for 2 offer is basically a Decree From God, and partly because, in Emma, Nicholls has written one of the best characters of the last few years.

Nicholls’s lovely gimmick is that each chapter rejoins two old friends on the anniversary of their meeting at university and gives us snapshots of what they’re doing. Dexter, a good-looking bloke blessed with charm and luck, is an absolute pillock, and is to be tolerated only because his zingy, wry friend Emma is just the most wonderfully-written girl. I started reading it before bed and found it so easy to read and fun that I was pushing myself to read faster so that I could cheat sleep until I’d finished it.

Emma’s letters to Dexter, her thoughts and the unrelenting crapness of her early-20s life in London fizz off the page. It’s entrancingly good writing – I want to find Nicholls, grab him by the lapels and scream “HOW did you come up with her, you utter, utter bastard?” – to the extent that it makes the later parts of the book feel all the more like an enormous cheat. Still, I cheated sleep successfully and read the entire book in one go. And, like everyone says, I laughed – out loud, properly – and cried – sobs, mind you, not just tears, great hulking sobs. He’s a horribly manipulative writer, this David Nicholls, but he judges his manipulation beautifully, even if it doesn’t always give you the results you want for Emma and Dexter.

This really is a perfect holiday book, but make sure to take advantage of those 3 for 2 offers because you’ll zoom through this on your flight there and then rue not bringing that monstrous doorstop, Wolf Hall.

No related posts.

Dead in the Family

Charlaine Harris
Gollancz 2010, Hardcover, 320 pages, £14.99

Having spawned the just as enjoyable hit TV series, True Blood, the TV cast adorn the book’s cover despite, in this universe, one of them being dead and another not existing.

But no matter. What will matter is fans of the series launching into this one which would be a colossal mistake given this is number 10: Sookie’s story is miles ahead from the TV series, featuring fairies, werepanthers and others supernatural beasties that haven’t so much as shown up on the box yet.
So while fans of the show should head for the earlier novels (not to worry, they’re so crack-like you’ll rocket through them in a week), Dead in The Family is absolute bliss for established Sookie nuts.

This is a relief more than anything. Harris is a brilliant writer, but ten books is ten books and I was gnawing my nails with worry that, by now, she might have been hit by burnout and expectation (Janet Evanovich’s wonderful Stephanie Plum novels stopped being wonderful around book 10 and yet – grimace – they keep coming).

After the torture, war and general upset of last year’s Dead and Gone – like Evanovich, Harris has cursed herself with a ‘themed’ series title – the pace is much slower, with Harris allowing readers the luxury of a gentle stroll through Sookie’s world without that much torment getting in the way. The ravages of previous events have certainly taken their toll on our lovely heroine, but it’s her new habit of swearing that jars the most. Sookie using “fucking” as an adjective is rather sad: such a sunny character, but one who’s seen too much.

The more sedate pace means that this is the one Stackhouse book where you aren’t immediately lunging for your house keys the moment you finish reading in order to go out and buy the next one. It’s a more thoughtful book than we’ve read before and serves as a welcome lull in what’s been a frenzied series of action, rather complicated supernatural histories and multiple deaths.

For the hooked reader, it’s also rather lucky there’s no cliffhanger because there’s a whole year to wait until number 11 comes out, making that something to look forward to rather than resent not having it immediately.

No related posts.

Well, Thelwell’s certainly full of these caricatures, and the frankly terrifying Saddle Club series from the 90s scared any competitive edge out of my horse-mad tween self, but pony books from the 40s through to the 60s are wonderful, which was why it was so nice to find a couple hanging around my parents’ house.

As a child, Pink Pony was one of my favourites, up there with St Clare’s and Malory Towers as a totem of a childhood that was far removed from my own suburban London life. Half-French October (brilliant name) spies a beautiful strawberry roan foal in a field one day. Her parents have promised her a horse of her own and she talks them into letting her own it and break her in herself. Bearing, in mind she’s barely 12 when this pony appears, what 12-year-old do you know who could a) commit do that sort of challenge and b) what parents now would let her? Let alone having a pony in the first place, bloody expensive things that they are.

Coming back to this book after 15 years, what struck me was how unflappable the prose is. There’s no breathless gosh or cripesing. Children are treated as children, but they’re given responsibilities. October’s pony – Southern Cross – has a brother who is bought by a rival rider and whose initially gentle temperament is completely ruined by harsh treatment. Despite having a rocking name and being bilingual, October and her half-Italian best friend are treated as outcasts by the school’s popular set until a nasty accident wins them sympathy.

I bought this copy of Pink Pony from the wonderful Jane Badger shop, a one-man online operation specialising in selling old books at extremely good prices. I’ve picked up a number of old Armada favourites here and it’s well worth a look. Pony books are a great read, calming and nostalgic without ever letting fantasy overtake the realities of money and they make responsibility something to aspire to.

No related posts.

The Boy with the Topknot

Sathnam Sanghera
Penguin 2009, Paperback, 336 pages, £9.99

What starts out as a memoir of growing up as a beloved younger son in a Punjabi family and then building a media life with white London friends as an adult soon zig-zags into family investigation. This isn’t a neatly arced story: we stumble across new developments with no real notice. Far from being an all-knowing observer dropped hints by Sanghera’s narration in some kind of Christmas Carol guided travel through his life, we come across things at the same time as he does, making it a far more accurate depiction of how surprises happen in real life. Bang! Surprise one. Bang! Surprise two. We flit from time to time (all held together easily, you don’t lose track) but you feel engaged rather than distanced. No Joanna Trolloping here.

And ah, the developments. Sorry to be a nuisance, but I’ rather not go into what some of the developments in Sanghera’s family are, partly because they’re not mentioned anywhere on the cover or in the reviews. The book would clearly like you to find out for yourself.

I will say that, while the family history Sanghera discovers is startling and frequently unsettling, this is far from being a “reboot of the misery memoir” as one of the reviews would claim. In fact, this is probably the most honest depiction of family life I’ve ever read, balanced and genuine, with things left unsaid rather than unveiled in great chapter-long confrontations.

Sanghera deserves huge credit (well, he wrote the thing, it’s fairly inevitable) for writing engagingly without being tempted by “-ising” his copy. No sentimalising, no eulogising, but still very funny and sympathetic. He’s both stern and forgiving of his younger self (who comes across – bless the past – as a marginally less un-self aware version of Adrian Mole), who – blessed with opportunities and strong parenting is left completely unaware of anything unusual in the family until the faintly staggering age of 24, and doesn’t follow it up until 30. It’s very rare to read of a discovery that doesn’t result in immediate confrontation, and refreshing – as any fule kno, life doesn’t work that way all the time.

The book’s cover makes it sound half-way between wacky East Is East/Bend It Like Beckham awakening-cum-wacky 80s memoir. It’s partly that, but this isn’t yet another eye rolling memoir offering a childhood up on a plate for us to giggle over and dispose of afterwards. Sanghera’s book is something that we all need: a memoir that depicts life and all the knotty sub-plots and quiet revelations that come along the way honestly, wittily and as naturally as you’ll get without going through it yourself.

No related posts.

Wise Children

Ali Smith (Introduction)
Vintage Classics 1992, Paperback, 256 pages, £8.99

It’s narrated by Dora Chance, an ageing Brixtonite whose life since 12 has been spent furiously dancing up cash with her identical twin, Nora, and who has taken on the mantle of chronicling the sprawling history of the Hazard family, a cross between the Oliviers, Redgraves and Jaggers. The illegitimate children of legendary Shakespearean actor Sir Melchior Hazard (a ham of the highest order), the Chance sisters are born on the wrong side of the bedspread and the tracks. In a big hurrah for south of the river, they live in Brixton, in a bubble of glamour and grind with their adoptive Grandma – a naturist alcoholic whose iron-jawed nature has much in common with Giles’ indestructible Grandma. I love south London, and as it barely gets a footnote in most novels beyond “This is where crime happens”, this made me empathise with the Chances even more.

Kicking off with the Chances about to turn 75, they’re invited to their illustrious father’s 100th birthday party and here start the reminiscences. From their teens spent as dancing starlets the Lucky Chances to post-WWII mediocrity in nude revues, the girls exist in showbiz’s mucky shadow while their father climbs ever higher, spilling wives and children as he goes. High and low culture eventually meet and they cross paths for a Shakespearean revue which becomes a smash hit, leading to tangles with Hollywood, marriage and intense family rivalry.

But the plot is the least of the reasons to enjoy Wise Children: Carter wields language rather like the Caterpillar wields his peyoteish pipe in Alice in Wonderland, creating jewelled and jaded characters that make perfect sense in their chaotic world, while not always being filled out much beyond a shorthand name and vague outline. Nights at the Circus was liberally embellished with magical realism – it featured a 6′2″ “cockney Venus” with wings and a circus adventure through Russia – and while Wise Children cranks down the whimsy by a few notches, Carter’s witchy way with characters still illuminates every page, from an angelic, nameless tenor who steals Dora’s heart to Melchior’s abandoned first wife, nicknamed Wheelchair, who lives in the Chances’ house. Magic does exist in Wise Children, but it’s sleight of hand: cuckoo’s nest children, borrowed lovers and a liberal smattering of hoodwink.

Carter builds her own Shakespearean farce from his comedy building blocks: mistaken identity being a major one. Fathers and mothers are interchangeable: gin-soaked Grandma may be the Chances’ real mother, their makeshift father Peregrine is the actual father to Melchior’s ghastly twin daughters Saskia and Imogen, Dora swaps places with Nora so she can borrow her boyfriend. Those at the bottom of the social pile rise, cruel children are punished, and the dead rise again for a last-minute entrance. a high-octane finale and list of Dramatis Personae at the end, stock characters and wordplay, Old Nanny, dance teacher Mrs Worthington (ha!), Daisy Duck and the risky Chances and Hazards themselves. Nora and Dora shrug on their full names, Leonora and Floradora, as the moment arises It also touches on the parts Shakespeare delicately glosses over: incest and boyfriend-swapping among others, all dropped in with the same breezy insouciance as Dora’s ongoing battle with saucy spellings: “come (or do you spell it ‘cum’, I’m never sure)”.

Oh yes – and the best definition of a happy ending I’ve ever read:

“But, truthfully, these glorious pauses do, sometimes, occur in the discordant but complementary narratives of our lives and if you choose to stop the story there, at such a pause, and refuse to take it any further, then you can call it a happy ending.”

It’s tricky to pick out specific lines for particular praise as every phrase is woven into the next. Carter’s gutsy, gorgeous world is probably best summed up by its last: “What a joy it is to dance and sing!” Filled as it is with chapters to roll on the tongue and savour, this is also a bloody good read for those balefully enduring a booze-free January.

No related posts.