Book of the month
This Bird Has Flown by Susanna Hoffs
The musician Susanna Hoffs found fame in the Eighties with the Bangles (with one of their biggest hits, Manic Monday, provided by Prince). She draws on her experiences for her fiction debut, This Bird Has Flown, in imagining Jane Start, a singer-songwriter in her thirties whose one big hit (written by the superstar Jonesy) is now ten years behind her.
Her boyfriend has dumped her for a lingerie model and she is reduced to performing “the one song” karaoke-style at Las Vegas stag nights. Grim. Her best friend and manager decides to give her a break and flies her to London. On the plane she sits next to Tom, a handsome Oxford literature professor, and sparks fly. Mere weeks later she has moved into his flat — but there’s a lot of emotional baggage in Tom’s past that he’s been quiet about (mainly involving devastatingly beautiful women), and soon enough it’s presenting a trip hazard.
Meanwhile, Jonesy (very obviously, and rather thrillingly, based on Prince) has asked Jane to perform with him at the Royal Albert Hall — cue much anxiety. Hoffs’s take on England, and Oxford’s stuffy traditions, is fun and she captures the wild ride of hot and hectic romance convincingly (albeit with a disconcerting number of references to nipples). Best of all, she converts her insider knowledge of the music business into a fascinating look at the highs, lows and big egos of the trade, and studs her storytelling with a terrific Sixties and Seventies playlist.
Piatkus, 368pp; £9.99
Buy a copy of This Bird Has Flown here
In a Thousand Different Ways by Cecelia Ahern
Since the age of eight, Alice has seen other people’s emotions as coloured auras: calm, love-filled pinks; cold, sad blues; furious or lust-fuelled reds. She can know someone’s innermost feelings with one glance — and the sensory overload is debilitating. Dispatched to an “alternative” school, she sees her unusual ability as a curse, but her friend, Gospel (Tourette’s, colour: pure honey), thinks it could be her superpower.
The bestselling Irish author Cecelia Ahern, of PS, I Love You fame, creates a dark Dublin world for Alice — long-departed dad, bipolar and alcoholic mum, dangerously unbalanced younger brother — then sends her out into the world to find a way to function as an extreme empath. She winds up in London, making a friend in an eccentric healer next door, reconnecting with Gospel (now a Premier League star) and maybe even finding a chance for love.
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Ahern makes Alice’s plight surprisingly and touchingly convincing; you can really imagine the swirling colours from her vivid descriptions, and Alice’s pain is often raw on the page. I was sold — shame there’s a rather unseemly gallop towards the end.
HarperCollins, 336pp; £20
Buy a copy of In a Thousand Different Ways here
The Wakes by Dianne Yarwood
Two marriages come off the rails at the start of The Wakes, a debut novel set in Sydney from the Australian Dianne Yarwood. Clare’s husband has flounced out in the throes of a midlife crisis. Chris and his wife have split after a failed final attempt at IVF. Clare and Chris first meet at a wake: she is helping her neighbour with a new funeral catering venture; he is the emergency doctor who couldn’t save the deceased.
Yarwood follows them as they stumble separately through the sharp left turns their lives have taken in middle age. The disappointments, shocks and losses are gently stacked against new friends, new opportunities — and lots of delicious-sounding food. More wakes lead to more meetings; Clare and Chris are brought together repeatedly by death, and offered another chance at life.
Yarwood’s feel for character-building is unerring, and The Wakes is a light-on-its-feet exploration of big themes that takes tragedy and farce in its stride. She’s an insightful, emotionally intelligent writer and her book is like a warm embrace, kind and never cloying.
Phoenix, 304pp; £16.99
Buy a copy of The Wakes here
One Last Chance by Sarah Jost
Few would pass up the chance to have another go at something we had stuffed up royally. But, as the sublime Groundhog Day showed us, you should be careful what you wish for. Two new novels run with the idea of being trapped in a time loop. In Maybe Next Time, Cesca Major puts her harried protagonist through one awful day repeatedly for months until she finds a way to fix things. But I preferred the Swiss-born, UK-based writer Sarah Jost’s twist on the idea. Her character, Lou, keeps reliving the same two years, from a sunny Saturday in July 2017, the 30th birthday of her friend Yuki, to a Monday in July 2019, when she attends the funeral of a man called Nick.
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First time round she barely knows the man, but apparently that’s not the way things should be. The longer time frame means Lou can effect much more significant (and satisfactorily engaging) changes in her life on each loop, especially as she begins to retain the memory of previous tries. Her and Nick’s story keeps heading for the same tragic conclusion, but Jost threads her novel with wry humour (especially about English mores) and isn’t too preachy about her lesson that running from painful experiences is not always the right answer.
Piatkus, 384pp; £9.99
Buy a copy of One Last Chance here
The Second Lady Silverwood by Emma Orchard
Finally, if you’re girding your loins already for the Bridgerton spin-off, Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, you may want to indulge in this Regency romp. Kate encounters Captain Benedict Silverwood at her first debutante ball, then has to witness him falling for the charms of the lovely Vanessa. Seven years later, Benedict is a widower looking for a new bride; Kate is an impoverished governess giving his daughter, Lucy, Italian lessons. The dowager Lady Silverwood, Benedict’s no-nonsense mother, suggests Kate could be his perfect second wife.
Emma Orchard, an avowed Georgette Heyer fan, clearly enjoys herself recreating cod Georgian language, as Benedict’s secrets and Kate’s unbridled enthusiasm in the bedroom are revealed. Probably unintentionally, it’s often snort-inducing.
Allison & Busby, 397pp; £8.99
Buy a copy of The Second Lady Silverwood here
