The theme for August for my Facebook Reading Challenge was a ‘beach novel’. It seemed an obvious theme to choose, with it being peak holiday season, and we’ve had some serious and challenging books over the last few months so I thought something light and easy was in order. I was on holiday myself, in Jersey, which I posted about last week and whilst there wasn’t much time spent on a beach (it was quite an active holiday, so actually there wasn’t even that much reading done!) it was a great book to dip in and out of on the flight, in the evening after dinner or in the occasional quieter moments.
The book concerns two women, Rosemary, an 86 year-old widow, and Kate, a 26 year-old journalist, and how they are brought together by chance when the Brixton lido is threatened with closure. Their relationship evolves as together they mount a campaign to keep the pool open, drawing in other local people and reviving a community spirit that everyone involved thought had been lost. In some ways the two women could not be more different: Rosemary is nearing the end of her life, now alone having lost her beloved husband, and has lived in this area of South London all her life. Kate, on the other hand, is young and bright, and has moved to the city from Bristol to begin her journalistic career on the local paper. Kate too, though, is lonely; unlike Rosemary she has not lost anyone, but she has not found anyone either, and she grapples with panic attacks, anxiety and low self-esteem. She shares a house with a number of similarly isolated flatmates, none of whom she knows, and stays alive thanks to ready meals.
When Kate is asked by her editor to cover the planned sale of the Lido by the local council to a property developer who wants to build a tennis court over it for the private use of residents of its luxury flats, she meets Rosemary who begins to recount to her the special significance of the Lido in her life. Not only that, Rosemary, a former children’s librarian, places it in the context of the decline of the sense of community in the area and how local people are being denied opportunities to come together, to play a part and to be involved. Rosemary’s story captures Kate’s imagination and she enters into full-on campaigning mode, setting up a petition, social media groups, and the story becomes a regular feature in the local newspaper.
Kate and Rosemary also begin to develop a close friendship; Kate starts to swim regularly and take care of herself more and this gives her a new energy and new coping strategies to help her deal with her feelings of anxiety. It also initiates Kate into the community and she finds a new circle of friends. For Rosemary the campaign and the friendship help her come to terms with the loss of her husband and when both women at different points have particularly bleak moments, the other is there to pick them up.
This book does exactly what it promises: it’s a heart-warming story, with strong themes around community values, friendship and companionship. It also deals with the taboo issue of depression as it affects a young woman, who has her whole life ahead of her and “should” be living a great life, and an elderly woman, a group whose mental health is so often neglected.
This wasn’t the ‘finest’ novel I’ve read all year, but it was one of the most charming and fitted the bill perfectly for a straightforward and honest summertime read.
Recommended.
What sort of books do you like to read on holidays?
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This book, like Welford’s others, is set in North Tyneside (where I used to live, so it resonates with me for that reason too), on the coast east of Newcastle. Alfie Monk is over 1,000 years old, having been born at the time of the Danish invasions of Britain. When he was young, his father was custodian of some ‘life pearls’ within which were stored an elixir of eternal life. To access the elixir the life pearls had to be smashed and the liquid consumed. Alfie’s father was involved in a fight with someone who tried to steal the life pearls, and he was killed. Alfie (unfortunately?) smashed two of them accidentally; he and his mother (and their cat!) drank the liquid, meaning they will never age and therefore never die of natural causes. The curse can only be lifted by drinking another dose of liquid, but there is only one life pearl left. This is hidden on a remote island off the Northumberland coast.
Tom Hazard has an extremely rare condition called anageria which means he ages extremely slowly. He is one of a tiny group of people who live for many hundreds of years. Tom was born in London in 1581 and mixed with the likes of Shakespeare and Marlowe in his youth, worked for Captain Cook in the 1700s and was a jazz pianist in Paris in the 1920s where he met, among others, F Scott Fitzgerald and watched Josephine Baker dance. What an incredibly lucky guy, you might think, but his condition is a curse and does not go unnoticed. He is haunted by the fact that his mother was condemned as a witch in the small village in which they lived, because the locals suspected dark forces at play when her teenage son appeared never to age. In his ‘late teens’ he meets and falls in love with Rose, and they have a child, Marion. Rose is the love of Tom’s life and although they move around, trying to avoid staying in one place too long and attracting attention, he realises that his existence presents a danger to Rose and the child. He has no choice but to leave her. The last time Tom sees Rose is when she is in her 50s, on her death bed with the plague, while he still looks like the young man she fell in love with many years earlier.
The central character of the novel is Florence Claybourne, elderly resident at the Cherry Tree sheltered housing development. Each of the residents has their own apartment, but the block is warden-controlled by Miss Bissell and Miss Ambrose, and there is a Day Room where communal activities are held. Some of the residents are frailer than others and there is the sense that this is the feeder facility for the local residential care home, Greenbank. The eponymous Elsie is Florence’s best friend, that’s the first ‘thing’ about Elsie; they have known each other since they were at school. The second ‘thing’ is that Elsie ‘always knows what to say to make me feel better’; Elsie always sounds a note of calm and reassurance whenever Florence becomes tense or upset, as she does frequently when the events of the novel unfold. Elsie and Florence are constant companions.
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