Tag: contemporary fiction

#BookReview Everyday Magic by Charlie Laidlaw

whatcathyreadnext

Everyday MagicAbout the Book

Carole Gunn leads an unfulfilled life and knows it. She’s married to someone who may, or may not, be in New York on business and, to make things worse, the family’s deaf cat has been run over by an electric car.

But something has been changing in Carole’s mind. She’s decided to revisit places that hold special significance for her. She wants to better understand herself, and whether the person she is now is simply an older version of the person she once was.

Instead, she’s taken on an unlikely journey to confront her past, present and future.

Format: Paperback                        Publisher: Ringwood Publishing
Publication date: 26th May 2021 Genre: Fiction

Find Everyday Magic on Goodreads

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

My Review

I was first introduced to the writing of Charlie Laidlaw when I read his book The Things We Learn When We’re Dead so when he contacted me to let me know he had a new book on the way I was delighted to take up his offer of a digital review copy.

As Everyday Magic opens, Carole (with an ‘e’) finds herself not so much at a crossroads in her life as at a dead end. She feels ‘tethered’ to her home and family, and rather undervalued by her husband Ray and daughter Iona. She idly wonders if they would even notice if she just disappeared – until of course they ran out of food or clean clothes. I think many of us with domestic responsibilities have had the same thought at some point!  Carole also feels in an emotional rut, the shiny sparkle of her marriage now tarnished by routine.  As she observes, her love for Ray has become an ‘assumption rather than a fact’.

Her reflections on how her life might have turned out had she made different decisions brought to mind Robert Frost’s well-known poem ‘The Road Not Taken’. Carole’s solution to her current malaise is to revisit places from her past – the Edinburgh flat she lived in as an undergraduate, the pub where she first met her husband, her childhood home. It’s much like what she did in her former career as an archaeologist trying to ‘stitch together the lives of long-dead people from fragments of artefacts’. However, before long Carole has the strange sensation that her journey into her past is being steered by forces outside her control. Might that explain the objects that keep turning up in unexpected places, or the chance meeting with a former colleague that opens up the possibility of a different future for Carole?

The book has plenty of humorous touches such as the accident involving Granny and its aftermath. (Trust me, it is funny!) Or Carole’s admiration for the husky-voiced ‘sat nav lady’ who, unlike Carole, never seems uncertain about which fork in the road to take and who, Carole imagines, enjoys a glamorous lifestyle between trips. And, like me, devoted fans of a famous seasonal work by Charles Dickens will have fun spotting the subtle allusions to characters and events in that book, a graveyard revelation being one of my favourites.

Everyday Magic is a heartwarming story about rediscovering what really matters in life and the importance of treasuring the people who mean the most to you while you can.

In three words: Intimate, insightful, engaging

Try something similar: Saving Missy by Beth Morrey

Follow this blog via Bloglovin

Charlie LaidlawAbout the Author

Charlie writes: ‘I was born in Paisley, central Scotland, which wasn’t my fault. That week, Eddie Calvert with Norrie Paramor and his Orchestra were Top of the Pops, with Oh, Mein Papa, as sung by a young German woman remembering her once-famous clown father. That gives a clue to my age, not my musical taste.  I was brought up in the west of Scotland (quite near Paisley, but thankfully not too close) and graduated from the University of Edinburgh. I still have the scroll, but it’s in Latin, so it could say anything.

I then worked briefly as a street actor, baby photographer, puppeteer and restaurant dogsbody before becoming a journalist. I started in Glasgow and ended up in London, covering news, features and politics. I interviewed motorbike ace Barry Sheene, Noel Edmonds threatened me with legal action and, because of a bureaucratic muddle, I was ordered out of Greece.  I then took a year to travel round the world, visiting 19 countries. Highlights included being threatened by a man with a gun in Dubai, being given an armed bodyguard by the PLO in Beirut (not the same person with a gun), and visiting Robert Louis Stevenson’s grave in Samoa. What I did for the rest of the year I can’t quite remember.

Surprisingly, I was approached by a government agency to work in intelligence, which just shows how shoddy government recruitment was back then. However, it turned out to be very boring and I don’t like vodka martini.  Craving excitement and adventure, I ended up as a PR consultant, which is the fate of all journalists who haven’t won a Pulitzer Prize, and I’ve still to listen to Oh, Mein Papa.

I am married with two grown-up children and live in East Lothian.’ (Photo credit: Author website)

Connect with Charlie
Website | Twitter | Facebook

#BookReview The Baby is Mine by Oyinkan Braithwaite #QuickReads @readingagency @MidasPR

whatcathyreadnext1 Comment

Quick Reads social media banner 2021

I’m delighted to be helping to celebrate the 15th anniversary today of The Reading Agency‘s Quick Reads programme and its vital role in tackling the adult literacy crisis. For those of us who cannot imagine life without books, it’s easy to forget that one in six adults in the UK – approximately 9 million people – find reading difficult, and that one in three people do not regularly read for pleasure. The aim of Quick Reads is to address those shocking statistics by inspiring emergent readers, as well as those with little time or who have fallen out of the reading habit, with entertaining and accessible writing from the very best contemporary authors.

In the fifteen years since its inception over five million Quick Reads have been distributed. From 2020 to 2022, the initiative is supported by a philanthropic gift from bestselling author, Jojo Moyes. This year, for every Quick Read bought up to 31 July 2021, another copy will be gifted to help someone discover the joy of reading.

I’d like to thank Hannah at Midas PR for offering me the opportunity to get involved in the celebrations and to read one of the fantastic books in this year’s selection. Having recently read Oyinkan Braithwaite’s Booker nominated debut My Sister, the Serial Killer, it was a simple choice for me. You can read my thoughts on The Baby Is Mine below.

The Baby Is MineAbout the Book

When his girlfriend throws him out during the pandemic, Bambi has to go to his Uncle’s house in lock-down Lagos. He arrives during a blackout, and is surprised to find his Aunty Bidemi sitting in a candlelit room with another woman. They both claim to be the mother of the baby boy, fast asleep in his crib.

At night Bambi is kept awake by the baby’s cries, and during the days he is disturbed by a cockerel that stalks the garden. There is sand in the rice. A blood stain appears on the wall. Someone scores tribal markings into the baby’s cheeks. Who is lying and who is telling the truth?

Format: Paperback (128 pages)    Publisher: Atlantic Books
Publication date: 27th May 2021 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Find The Baby is Mine on Goodreads

Purchase links
Bookshop.org
Disclosure: If you buy a book via the above link, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops

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

My Review

Set in lockdown Lagos, The Baby Is Mine has the same touches of humour that made My Sister, the Serial Killer such an entertaining read. For example, Bambi’s parenting skills initially seem doubtful when his reaction to being shown the baby is that it looks like a baked potato. Talking of which, the central role that food plays in Nigerian life is once again evident, whether as a communal act, an important element of hospitality or proof of sincere affection. As Bambi’s Aunt Bidemi remarks dismissively of Esohe, the young woman who claims the baby is hers and was also her rival for Bidemi’s late husband’s affections, “What kind of love is that? Do you know she cannot even make his favourite soup?”

Bambi, Bidemi and Esohe are forced to sit out lockdown together until such time as a test can take place to confirm to which of the women the baby belongs. Bambi’s sister is no help either, prevented from coming to his assistance by the lockdown restrictions. And his brother-in-law is not much better but after all, as Bambi ruefully observes, what can you expect from an Arsenal supporter? In the meantime, Bambi is stuck in a house with a crying baby who requires frequent nappy changes, a cockerel that crows all night, intermittent power cuts and two feuding women. How was your lockdown?

At around one hundred pages (if you exclude the extract from My Sister, the Serial Killer and the acknowledgements), The Baby Is Mine definitely lives up to its description as a “quick read”. It would make a great introduction to the writing of Oyinkan Braithwaite or to Nigerian literature in general.

In three words: Lively, funny, engaging

Try something similar: My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Follow this blog via Bloglovin

Oyinkan BraithwaiteAbout the Author

Oyinkan Braithwaite gained a degree in Creative Writing and Law at Kingston University. Following her degree, she worked as an assistant editor at Kachifo, a Nigerian publishing house, and has been freelancing as a writer and editor since. In 2014, she was shortlisted as a top-ten spoken-word artist in the Eko Poetry Slam, and in 2016 she was a finalist for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

Her first book, My Sister, the Serial Killer, was a number one bestseller. It was shortlisted for the 2019 Women’s Prize and was on the longlist for the 2019 Booker Prize.  She lives in Lagos, Nigeria. (Photo credit: Goodreads author page)

Connect with Oyinkan
Website | Twitter