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THIS LOVELY CITY by Louise Hare (HQ £12.99, 400 pp)
THIS LOVELY CITY
by Louise Hare (HQ £12.99, 400 pp)
It’s fifties South London, among the Windrush generation. Twentysomething Lawrie is getting to grips with his new home.
It’s going well: a postman by day, he’s in a jazz band by night and, in between, there’s his sweet, devoted, next-door-neighbour girlfriend, Evie.
Then — disaster. The body of a baby is discovered on Clapham Common and the innocent Lawrie becomes the target of cruel Inspector Rathbone.
Whose baby is it, though? Suddenly every character has a secret but, a mistress of suspense, Hare keeps us guessing to the last page.
I loved the post-war atmosphere: bombed, broken London as visual metaphor for the story’s violence and racism. Can Lawrie and Evie face down these ugly attitudes armed only with hope and youth?
GOOD RIDDANCE
GOOD RIDDANCE by Elinor Lipman (Lightning Books £8.99, 304 pp)
by Elinor Lipman (Lightning Books £8.99, 304 pp)
Daphne, decluttering her New York flat, throws out whatever fails to spark joy. This includes an annotated high school yearbook left to her by her dead mother, a teacher.
Another building resident, documentary-maker Geneva, finds it in the rubbish and decides to make it into a film.
Daphne, horror-struck, tries to get the yearbook back. But Geneva, a force of nature, refuses.
A screwball series of events begins with a trip to a high school reunion, where Daphne discovers the book’s explosive secret.
And once her celebrity neighbour gets involved, things take a romantic turn. I was new to Lipman, but I loved her signature snappy style and gently satirical detail. From dog-walkers to state senators, chocolate courses to trash TV, all American life is here.
The Operator by Gretchen Berg (Headline Review £16.99, 352 pp)
The Operator
by Gretchen Berg (Headline Review £16.99, 352 pp)
Dissatisfied, nosy Vivian is a Fifties switchboard operator. She finds relief from her frustrations by listening to other people’s conversations.
The kingpins of Wooster, Ohio are the wealthy Millers, and it’s an exchange between its matriarch, Betty, and someone unknown that Vivian overhears — and which blows her world apart.
The voyage of discovery on which she then embarks has life-changing consequences, not only for her family and the Millers, but for herself.
In this well-plotted comic drama of small-town life, Berg combines the technicolour gloss of a Cary Grant film with the humdrum humour of Garrison Keillor.
She keeps the surprises coming right until the end.
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