Tag: contemporary fiction

#BookReview Love After Love by Ingrid Persaud @FaberBooks

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Love After LoveAbout the Book

Irrepressible Betty Ramdin, her shy son Solo and their marvellous lodger, Mr Chetan, form an unconventional household. Happy in their differences, they build a home together.

Home: the place keeping these three safe from an increasingly dangerous world – until the night when a glass of rum, a heart-to-heart and a terrible truth explodes the family unit, driving them apart.

Format: Paperback (410 pages)         Publisher: Faber
Publication date: 14th January 2021 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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Hive | Amazon UK
Links provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

Winner of the Costa First Novel Award in 2020, Love After Love is the touching story of two rather lonely souls – Betty Ramdin and Mr Chetan, and Betty’s son Solo.  Betty is a widow who experienced violence during her marriage. Solo feels the absence of a father and is withdrawn and friendless. Mr Chetan has secrets of his own and longs to be part of family.  Through mutual affection and laughter, the three of them form a happy household unit. As Mr Chetan observes, ‘People have all kind of families’.  Unfortunately their amiable arrangement doesn’t last and Betty finds herself estranged from her son.

Over the course of several years, events in the lives of Betty, Solo and Mr Chetan encompass topics such as the plight of undocumented migrants in the United States, racial and sexual discrimination, and mental illness. The book explores whether a terrible act, even if carried out in order to protect another, can ever be forgiven and whether bonds which seem broken irrevocably can ever be mended.

The three characters are so well-drawn that it’s impossible not to feel both sympathy for – and, at times, frustration with – each of them as they face their different personal struggles, their disappointments and their shattered dreams. I found Mr Chetan’s story particularly affecting. I’ll admit to shedding tears at one point and silently begging the author, ‘No, you can’t do that!’  As Betty reflects, ‘We are forever getting more than we can bear. Always’.

Although it took me a while to adjust to the use of patois and the rhythm of the prose, it really brought the story alive and I enjoyed being introduced to Trinidadian idioms such as ‘I don’t want to put goat mouth on it’, ‘Every bread has its cheese’ or ‘Monkey know which tree to climb’.  (Sorry, you’ll have to look them up if you can’t work them out for yourself!) I also loved learning about the food, customs and culture of Trinidad.

Love After Love has been languishing in my TBR pile for several months and it was only because I needed a book to match a category in the What’s In A Name Challenge 2021 that I took it down from the bookshelf. I’m so glad I did. At times heart-warming and at others heart-breaking, I absolutely adored Love After Love and I can understand why it has garnered so much praise from readers.

In three words: Emotional, immersive, tender

Try something similar: This Lovely City by Louise Hare

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Ingrid PersaudAbout the Author

Born in Trinidad, Ingrid Persaud won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2017 and the BBC National Short Story Award in 2018. She read law at the LSE and was an academic before studying fine art at Goldsmiths and Central Saint Martins. Her writing has appeared in Granta, Prospect, the Guardian, the Independent, National Geographic, Five Dials and Pree magazines. She lives in London. (Photo: Twitter profile)

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#BlogTour #BookReview The Golden Girls’ Getaway by Judy Leigh @rararesources @judyleighwriter @BoldwoodBooks

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Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Golden Girls’ Getaway by Judy Leigh. My thanks to Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Boldwood Books for my review copy via NetGalley. Do check out the posts by my tour buddies for today.

The Golden Girls' GetawayAbout the Book

It has been a long and lonely year for neighbours Vivienne, Mary and Gwen. All ladies of a ‘certain age’, their lockdown experience has left them feeling isolated and alone. They are in desperate need of a change.

Things start to look up however, when Gwen comes up with a plan to get them out of London by borrowing a motor home. In no time at all the ladies are on the road – away from the city, away from their own four walls, and away from their worries.

The British countryside has never looked more beautiful. As they travel from Stonehenge to Dartmoor, from the Devon and Cornish coasts to the Yorkshire moors, gradually the years fall back, and the three friends start to imagine new futures with no limitations.

And as their journey continues and their friendships deepen, and while the seaside views turn into glorious mountains and moors, Mary, Vivienne and Gwen learn to smile again, to laugh again, and maybe even to love again. Now they can believe that the best is still to come.

Format: Paperback (365 pages)           Publisher: Boldwood Books
Publication date: 7th December 2021 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Find The Golden Girls’ Getaway on Goodreads

Purchase links
Hive | Amazon UK
Links provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

After my recent diet of rather serious books, The Golden Girls’ Getaway was a welcome helping of light relief. A Devon cream tea after a bowl of beetroot soup, if you like.

All three of the characters were a delight to become acquainted with: Vivienne, the stylish former soap-actress afraid she has been consigned to thespian obscurity; Gwen, the former opera singer who now only has an audience of one – herself; and Mary, who cooks up a mean curry and has an impressive and imaginative range of swear words.  Probably my favourite of the three was Gwen. I found it touching how at the beginning of the book she thinks of herself as having lost the knack of living, spending most of her time as she does in her flat. And although all three of the ‘golden girls’ experience a transformation in their lives, I felt Gwen’s was the most deserved because of her kindly nature.

I loved the idea of the three of them sharing the motor home, sitting outside of an evening admiring the view at their overnight stop and sipping a glass of wine – although I’d not be quite so keen on the chemical toilet! I enjoyed eavesdropping on their conversations about love, life, missed opportunities and new horizons, and witnessing their reaction to the various places they visit.

There were some laugh out loud moments such as the ‘full frontal frolic’ (sorry you’ll have to read the book for more detail), an accidental lock-in, a quadbike rescue, Vivienne being recognised for a role she wouldn’t consider the height of her acting career, and Mary’s microphone testing spiel.

The Golden Girls’ Getaway is a heart-warming and entertaining way to spend a few hours. So let’s join them in their toast ‘To the three of us and the best of times to come’.

In three words: Funny, engaging, uplifting

Try something similar: Three Women and a Boat by Anne Youngson

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Judy LeighAbout the Author

Judy Leigh is the bestselling author of Five French Hens, A Grand Old Time and The Age of Misadventure, and the doyenne of the ‘it’s never too late’ genre of women’s fiction. She has lived all over the UK from Liverpool to Cornwall, but currently resides in Somerset. Sign up to Judy’s newsletter here.

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Judy Leigh