It’s the first Wednesday of the month and so here I am with some quick reviews of some books I read last month that I haven’t already told you about. I had a lot of books that I didn’t like last month, but I’ve tried to moderate myself and give you some stuff I actually did like!
Laura Clark is Away from Her Desk by Helen Russell*
Laura Clark is a 40-something HR manager, married to a golf-obsessd husband with a 19 year-old daughter who is drifting towards the end of a gap year with no idea what comes next and a mother who constantly calls on her to ask for things or complain. But one day Laura doesn’t turn up for work, disappears from her home and stops answering her phone. Gradually the people in Laura’s life find their lives descending into chaos without her there to perform the invisible labour they had all taken for granted. This is told from the point of view of one of Laura’s work colleagues, her husband, her daughter and her best friend and as you read you build a picture of a deeply unappreciated woman moving through her life without anyone doing anything for her. The collapse of everyone else’s lives is humourous to read, but actually I found this suprisingly bleak – the idea that Laura had been slogging on through all of their grunt work without anyone noticing is chilling. Luckily I thought the ending pulled it around or I might have been really quite depressed by the end!
In Dog We Trust by Beth Kendrick
Jocelyn is a town person and her mother has always told her to stay away from summer people – except for providing them with their clean laundry as part of the family business. But when she is named legal guardian for a pack of pedigree dogs she finds herself thrust into the rich side of town. But along with the dogs comes their owner’s estranged son who is determined to overturn the will…This is the fifth book in this series and I’ve read the first two and really enjoyed them and skipped a few to get to this one and it’s fine – but it’s not as good as the first two. I appreciated the subtle commentary on class but I did want to give some of the characters a bit of a shake at times. I think if I hadn’t enjoyed the previous two so much I would have enjoyed this more – I was just holding it to a higher standard!
When Gavin Met Stacey and Everything in Between by Ruth Jones and James Corden
This is a retrospective on the beloved TV series written by its creators. If you like the show, you’ll enjoy the insider information in this – I really liked learning how the show evolved from its original form into the show that we all loved. James Corden has a bad rap (rep?) as a person these days but Gavin and Stacey is a masterpiece and his rapport with Ruth is charming. If you like the show you’ll like this, but if you like the behind the scenes of how things get made, this is also interesting.
