GoodReads meta-data is 146 pages, rated 3.89 by 28 litizens.
Genre: Chick Lit
Verdict: Creaks but fun.
Number One Curmudgeon Avenue is a four-story Victorian house with attic conversion near Manchester in wet England. The house narrates the story of its occupants, namely the sisters Edna and Edith, now in their cantankerous dotages, and assorted relatives, lodgers, neighbours, and the incessant rain that forces things on them, like a roofer.
It is a small world that brings them into contact with many from their past: boyfriends, girlfriends, offspring, and more. Maurice comes a-courting in his white cowboy hat with rat poison in one hand and minties in the other. Layabout son Ricky along with his ex and her sister and mother in tow tries to wheedle mum and auntie out of the house. Then Edith’s lost love, the exotic Genevieve reappears, briefly. The paying lodger is too good to be true, and that is a fact.
First in a series of the Terraced House Diaries. The walls not only have ears, but eyes and a keyboard as well. It ends as ‘To Be Continued.’
Samantha Henthorn
N. B. Copy edited needed. Missing words, often prepositions make it hard to follow at times but worth the effort.
GoodReads meta-data is 208 pages, rated 3.95 by 150 citizens.
Genre: Chick Lit
Verdict: Ditto
The Set-up: Post war life in a picturesque small village in Little England is the locale. There is much description of the settlement, the weather, the railway embankment, the culverts, along with the habits and peculiarities of the residents. Two long established families have been forced in the last generation to sell their properties. One house was bought by a wealthy titled lady, while the other by a parvenu businessman.
Among the cast are two spinsters who keep, breed, and sell dogs in a disheveled house that belongs to the landlord farmer, whose own finances are precarious. He is also the landlord for some others.
There is a young war-bride widow who never thinks of the past, along with her younger sister and the two of them live with their mother in another property rented from the farmer now that they have had to give up their erstwhile manor to the titled lady buyer.
Nearby is an irascible major who treats his wife like a slow-witted subaltern, and she loves it, with a nephew in residence who mopes around like an impoverished member of the Lost Generation of 1919.
Her ladyship of the newly-bought manner has a ne’er-do-well son in tow. He had been in the army but that is barely mentioned. [Whatever you do, don’t mention the war.]
These characters amble about, occasionally ricochet off each other and carom here and there for two hundred pages before the two sisters get paired off with the parvenu and the farmer, while the nephew and moper continue to ne’er-do-well and to mope.
Elizabeth Fair
This is the first of half a dozen novels set in Bramton Wick, and I suppose the characters continue, but I will probably not find out for myself. While the book is very well written and the dissection of the various characters is gentle and insightful, there is no momentum in it.
None of them has any ambition, any desires, any blood, any purpose, any mission, any thing to motivate them for the day ahead, or the reader for the pages ahead. It is as though each waits off page to come on and act out the prescribed role and then retire to the wings. That social type has been exemplified for the time being now on to the next.
It is, however, a study in the managing social relationships and that gives it the title Chick Lit. Most of the management is done by the sisters and it is through manipulation, not communication, but it is amusing, mild, diverting, and well intentioned, if utterly pointless. I hasten to add that Chick Lit does not have to be pointless, Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend and the Overdue Life of Amy Byler, both discussed elsewhere on this blog, are certainly Chick Lit and they have momentum. Barbara Pym’s comedies of manners, several of which are discussed on this blog, also have a claim to the genre Chick Lit avant le mot, and her characters have vitality and meaning that seems to lack in the book under review. Likewise, the Jon Hassler novels that feature Miss Agatha take the label Chick Lit proudly and let me tell you Miss Agatha has purpose.
The Overdue Life of Amy Byler (2019) by Kelly Harms
GoodReads meta-data is 328 pages, rated 3.94/5.00 by 3178 litizens.
Genre: Chick Lit
Verdict: Go, girl!
By a quirk of fate (= a college roommate from the salad days), Single Mom school librarian from the mud that is western Pennsylvania, while attending a conference, becomes the subject of a comprehensive multi-media makeover on a brief vacation in New York City from her innumerable maternal duties. Her vanished ex-husband reappears to take care of the children, twelve year old Einstein and a fourteen year old wanna be party girl. Single Mom has fifteen minutes of fame.
She is riddled with guilt, self-doubts, and hesitations about leaving home alone but keeps on keeping on. Roommate cuts through all that. Meanwhile, daughter sends encouraging and disconcerting texts. Her junior Einstein continues to solve math problems mentally for relaxation, mulling over careers as a neurosurgeon or astrophysicist. Made-over Single Mom’s idea of doing the town in the Big Worm is to go to bookstores, despite some strong-arming from roommate.
There are plenty of laughs along the way. Nerd boy makes jokes in Latin. Does he ever! Roommate says Single Mom has to wear make-up, otherwise people will think she is dead; so pale is she. Her assigned personal trainer is desperate to make this project work to further his career and that includes pimping for her, whether she wants it or not. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, #tags are all employed.
When occurs an accident Amy takes over while her Ex goes into Chernobyl meltdown. Crisis management according to Amy: if no one is dead and no one’s hair is on fire, we can cope. Party girl daughter was doing unsupervised diving practice in her Olympic ambitions to master the springboard and did a Greg Louganis. Then there is the fate of the stuffed cheetah at the hospital. Best not think about that.
By the way her conference presentation concerned Flexthology to encourage reluctant readers. She might have applied it to some of the GoodReads contributors who complain about this term, this idea, this….they know not what. The essence of Flexthology is a variety of comparable books from which these reluctant readers choose to complete reading assignments. To overcome peer pressure the reading is done on e-readers, having no tell-tale covers. There are many financial and legal issues to resolve about intellectual property. It is anthology reading but since there is choice it is flexible. The 2.0 ratings I glanced at on GoodReads grouse about this unusual term, and the very idea they might have to stop and think what the neo-logism means.
Kelly Harms
Of course libraries serve the same purpose: a variety of books from which a reader may choose. Amy’s point is to standardise that variety enough and to put it in tiers to fit it into a school curriculum. But wait, let’s not get too serious. It is after all only a plot device.
