POPULAR FICTION
by Marcia Willett HOMECOMINGS (Bantam €22.90) DASHING pilot Jamie’s career has hit the buffers. He’s returned home to the West Country just as freelance cook Dossie comes to terms with her parents’ death.
They fall instantly in love, to the dismay of Jamie’s cousin Hugo, who had his eye on Dossie himself.
Willett’s specialist subject is family complications past and present, all served up, cream-tea-like, with lashings of lush Cornish setting. Her writing combines a painter’s eye for detail with warm compassion for her characters.
While not a book for those who like hot action, this absorbing tale is as satisfying as one of Dossie’s slow-cooked stews.
IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE by Isla Dewar
(Polygon €10.51) I COMPLETELY adored this offbeat book, set in 1970s Edinburgh. It stars shy investigator Charlie Gavin, who runs the Be Kindly Missing Persons Bureau, and his spiky sidekick Martha, formerly of pioneering girl band Vinnie And The Vixens.
Both Charlie and Martha have suffered; he was abandoned as a baby by his mother, while she was abandoned with a baby by her husband. In the course of a complex investigation, they grow to know and depend on each other; will it end in love?
Charlie’s got a heart the size of the planet: some of the missing people don’t want to be found, so he takes them to live with him and they prove to have unlikely talents.
It’s a wonderful, funny novel full of insight in which kindness and love take centre stage — but with absolutely none of the mushiness that implies, thank goodness.
GEORGE & LIZZIE by Nancy Pearl
(Touchstone €10.05) THIS bittersweet comedy takes two well-known Jewish family types and unites them brilliantly as the title couple.
George comes from a nurturing, overfeeding, child-oriented family, while Lizzie’s parents are straight out of Woody Allen: arid, anti-social academics.
Despite — irony alert! — being psychologists, they barely notice she exists and it’s to attract their attention that she decides to sleep with the entire high school football team. Lydia and Mendel (the parents) don’t react directly, but write about it in a psychology magazine. Jack, the love of Lizzie’s life, reads it and dumps her.
Luckily, the adorable George comes along to pick up the shattered pieces. But has Lizzie got over Jack?
Set in the recent past, this incredibly funny, thoughtful and clever novel is great on growing up — and family, most of all.