POPULAR FICTION
HOW TO STOP TIME by Matt Haig (Canongate £12.99)
TOM HAZARD, a London teacher, is four centuries old but looks just 40. He has lived everywhere and met Captain Cook, f. Scott fitzgerald and ( my absolute favourite bit) Shakespeare.
on the downside, he has watched the murder of his mother by a witch-obsessed mob and seen his wife die of the plague. Completing his heartbreak is the fact he lost touch with his daughter, Marion, centuries ago. Can he find her now? And love again? And stay out of the clutches of those who want his ageless genes for biotech?
i loved the jokes about the past and the musings on love and time, but what i adored most of all were the scenes in elizabethan england. Who knew that Greensleeves was a rude song? Please write a whole tudor book next, Matt!
THE KEEPER OF LOST THINGS by Ruth Hogan (Two Roads £16.99)
WHEN this book first appeared i said it was the perfect cure for the New Year blues. But it could apply just as well to any summer blues. Shy Laura is housekeeper to Anthony, who copes with the loss of his spirited wife by collecting items that people have lost.
they fill a whole room and when he leaves his beautiful house to Laura, the catch is that she must find their owners. She is joined in her quest by super-wise Sunshine, whose down’s syndrome gives her valuable emotional insight.
the subplot is hilarious, about Bomber the publisher, his devoted friend eunice and ghastly sister Portia.
this touching, funny and romantic debut is that rare and precious thing — a real story with brilliant characters.
ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS COMPLETELY FINE by Gail Honeyman (HarperCollins £12.99)
ANOTHER fantastic book about someone outside the norm.
Grumpy, frumpy eleanor despises the people in her office. No one — including the reader — realises her sneering stems from a terrible past. She spends her weekends in vodkas-oaked oblivion, seeing no one. But then along comes raymond.
He’s far from a catch — he eats noisily and dresses terribly — but he’s got a kind heart, the first eleanor has ever come across.
Slowly, cautiously, he encourages her to rejoin the human race. it’s
misery memoir meets Adrian Mole with a bit of The Office thrown in. What’s not to like?
GINNY MOON by Benjamin Ludwig
(HQ £12.99) This amazing novel takes you right inside the head of an autistic teenager — one who’s adopted and has a junkie for a birth mother. But if that sounds heavy, fear not — you won’t read a funnier, more moving book this year.
Narrator Ginny’s latest ‘ forever parents’ are about to have a baby of their own. her arrival stirs up painful memories of Ginny’s old life. What happened to her baby sister?
Ginny’s anxiety on this score, which she can’t communicate and her carers misunderstand, leads her back into her mother’s fatal grip.
The reader is on tenterhooks as she blunders from misjudgment to mistake. My family became obsessed with Ginny Moon. her catchphrase: ‘Can i have a beverage?’ is still current.