POPULAR FICTION
VALENTINE by Elizabeth Wetmore (4th Estate £14.99, 320 pp)
THIS amazing debut is set in Texas just before the Seventies oil boom. But it’s not glam and dallasy. Au contraire, we’re in the endless flatlands, in baking scrub and poor small towns: a brutal place which spawns brutal behaviour, especially towards women.
as the novel opens, a Mexican teenage girl has been raped and almost killed, and the plot follows those affected by the incident.
It’s like a grimmer, newer version of To Kill a Mockingbird. Many of the same elements feature: the offbeat neighbour, the puzzled child, the racists, the trial that goes wrong.
The characters’ stories are told in turn but the main narrator is Mary rose Whitehead, to whom the injured girl first came for help.
It sounds bleak, and it is, but there is beauty, too; in the landscape, in the spirit of some of the people and most of all in Wetmore’s wonderful writing.
THE LIGHTNESS by Emily Temple
(Borough Press £14.99, 300 pp) IT’S a year since olivia’s father disappeared. He went to a meditation retreat in the mountains and never came back. deciding to go and look for him, she ends up at the Buddhist Boot Camp For Bad Girls. Turns out that her father’s retreat is also where the american rich send intransigent daughters.
Between lengthy theological diversions, the main story unfolds. once installed at the school, olivia befriends Serena, Janet and laurel, three aloof beauties held in awe by the other girls. They’re not very nice, some of their ideas are dangerous and they’re all lusting after a hunky gardener.
It’s like a twisted Malory Towers or maybe a cosmic version of Heathers: teenage violence, sex and envy mixed up with eastern theology. I enjoyed it, although the ending was a bit of a let-down.
GROWING UP FOR BEGINNERS by Claire Calman
(Boldwood £8.99, 350 pp) I loved this heartwarming comedy from new publishers Boldwood. The characters are brilliant, especially the men. In romances they’re often dull, but Calman’s are great, especially loathsome roger, patronising husband of heroine eleanor.
Will she ever find the guts to leave him? Then there’s lovely andrew. dumped by his girlfriend, he moves back with his overfeeding, ever-Hoovering mother. Can he find love again? There’s also Conrad, eleanor’s stern, intellectual father. How is he related to the other main characters, hippy artist Cecilia and her daughters?
The theme is that it’s never too late for love and redemption (although in roger’s case it might be).