This is a must-read for all you life-long bookworms out there, you know who you are. Since the age of 6, sat on your bed or the sofa with your nose in a book, with your mum hoovering around your feet. I have holiday pics of me aged about 8 or 9 on a Greek island, my dad waterskiing, my sister frollicking in the sea, and me sitting on a rock with my hair in a scarf, sunglasses on, a book propped open on my knees, oblivious to everything going on around me. I think if I didn't give books away every now and then (yes it's true, well there are some books I read believe it or not that I'm not keen on and thus don't want to keep), my house would look how Lucy Mangan's sounds.
On the whole, I related well to most of the books Lucy talks about reading while growing up. She's about 8 years younger than me, and surpisingly that's made a difference in her teen choice of books. She talks about Sweet Valley High, but when I was a teen I was reading a whole range of adult books from Daphne du Maurier's 'Rebecca' to Jilly Cooper's 'Riders', Nevil Shute's 'A Town Like Alice', George Eliot's 'Silas Marner'. I don't remember there being a craze for reading amongst my school contemporaries - I always felt that I was the only one reading.
Also, Lucy talks about books she loved when she was less than 5, picture books and such. I don't remember anything like that. The earliest books I remember being my absolute favourites were Milly Molly Mandy (which Lucy also talks about, which I love her for) and Mrs Pepperpot. But picture books like The Very hungry Caterpillar, or Dr Seuss - nope. But that may be because my sister and I weren't read to by our parents? I don't know, I don't like to ask them in case that was the case and I make them feel guilty.
However, Lucy's whole section from Milly Molly Mandy upto about age 12 I could totally relate to, and I just adored her descriptions of them, and why she was totally in love with them. Lucy also had a great sense of humour, and had me laughing out loud in a few places. The one downside to her writing was her extremely over-long sentences. Oh my goodness, they were so long I would lose the thread and have to start it again. Hyphens, brackets, commas - gosh, as soon as I saw one coming, I'd gloss over it and start the next sentence. Not ideal.
Apart from that, this is a lovely book to read to evoke those wonderful moments when it was just you and a book. Let the world carry on around you.
Oh I just thought this was wonderful - I didn't want it to end. It's one of those books that you just want to be part of, you want to live in their world and live how they live. I guess in this instance it's because all the characters are very free spirited and they all enjoy their lives. I don't want to make out it's a happy book, because it isn't really. A mother has gone missing, feared drowned, so her husband and children have spent 11 years not knowing whether she'll come back into their lives or not. The book has 3 intertwined storylines - the present where it's 2004, the children are grown up and carrying on with their lives, and the father, Gil, has an out-of-control habit of collecting second hand books that have old letters or notes or doodles from past owners in them. The second storyline is from the mother, Ingrid, in 1992 where she is writing letters to an absent Gil, telling him what she and their daughters are doing with their lives, and hiding the letters inside books. The third storyline is also set within the letters - Ingrid is retelling the story from when she and Gil first met in 1976, upto the present. It is mostly through these letters that we learn all the characters, especially that of Gil, and what may have caused Ingrid to disappear.
I loved all the characters, but all in a different way. I thought they were very realistic. I just wanted it to go on and on. I'm definitely going to have to read her first novel 'Our Endless Numbered Days, which won the 2015 Desmond Elliott Prize.
