Advantages: An absorbing novel with factual description Disadvantages: None!
Review of Water Gypsies by Annie Murray.
Not an audio book, please disregard specific criteria!
ISBN 0330492144
Paperback novel- 458 pages.
Published by MacMillan in 2004.
Cover price £6.99
The Plot
Water Gypsies is a modern fiction novel by popular female author Annie Murray. The story is set in 1942 and follows the life of narrowboat skipper's wife, Maryann Bartholomew.
Maryann and her husband Joel work the canal system around Birmingham in their narrowboat Theodore and butty, Esther Jane . The life is a hard one, loads to be collected and delivered, children to raise and care for, all in the confines of a seven by nine foot narrowboat boater's cabin.
Maryann had a life of suffering as a child growing up in Birmingham and her past often comes back to haunt her. She has recurring nightmares of the horrors she faced ...
Advantages: Good for escapism, light-hearted, fun Disadvantages: Not the best of it's kind, others do chick-lit better
Annie Valentine is stylish, savvy, mulit-tasker extraordinaire and she is the central character in Carmen Reid's 'The Personal Shopper'. I've never read anything by Reid before and I nearly didn't read this after I noticed the appallingly cheesy tagline on the back of the book - 'A fabulous read. A sexy read. A Carmen Reid'. But I decided to overlook this minor 'flaw' and give it a go - after all, you should NEVER judge a book by its cover!
Annie Valentine is the single mother of a stroppy teenage girl and painfully shy eleven year old boy. She is a super-busy personal shopper in a super-swanky department store. She spends her days mentoring and re-inventing her clients through the medium of clothes and she's damn good at her job. It seems though, that she is so good at her job that she leaves no time for her personal life. Will she ...
Advantages: A feisty, funny, memorable heroine plus a great story Disadvantages: It came to an end
wonderfully rounded. They are all given great parts in this busy story and not one is a disappointment. I loved and hated them as necessary.
No way does the story focus totally on Annie's job as a Personal Shopper. You won't find screeds of fashion tips and hints cunningly included within the plot. You will find some, of course, but the theme is certainly not intrusive. We meet a few of Annie's favourite customers and their parts are well written and the interaction between them and Annie is not in any way unnecessary to the story. There's no padding in Ms Reid's writing.
Oh! And I have to tell you that Carmen Reid is also the only author I've read to date who can write a lovemaking scene which is actually delightfully sexy and funny and not at all clinical or mucky.
With lots of love and laughter, a little sadness and a huge ...
