One of the aspects of being an English teacher that can be somewhat negative is that everyone assumes you’re a book snob. They think I spend all my time with my head buried in Shakespeare or reading the poetry of Hardy while musing over the works of Charles Dickens. I must have taken the opportunity to express my opinion on novelists such as Orwell, Huxley and Atwood predicting our futures to be very desolate and bleak places. And that I simply have no time for the books that can be purchased in pairs from Asda for £7. Surely these books with their quaint pictures of rolling hills and a woman on bicycle, scarf flapping in the wind as she heads into her unknown future, are just utter trash?
Well no. They’re not. They’re one of my absolute favourite things; and I’ll tell you why.
Last year was my very first Mother’s Day having given birth to my wonderful son Dexter in August 2016. My husband, occasionally lacking in imagination though generally pretty good at presents, helped him (yes I know but stick with me) choose some books for Mummy for her holiday before she returned to work after maternity leave. We were going to Menorca for a week to have some time together before I went back to my aforementioned job as an English teacher. He had chosen ‘The Summer Seaside Kitchen’ by Jenny Colgan and ‘Nice Work If You Can Get It’ by Celia Imrie. I was familiar with Imrie having been a huge Victoria Wood fan but hadn’t heard of Colgan. I smiled but inwardly thought “Oh lovely, chick lit.” Yes I was being the very snob I always dislike being mistaken for! Anyway, into the suitcase they went and off we went.
I devoured them both in two days. I couldn’t put them down. I then had to struggle to find my next fix as the wi-fi on the resort was a bit rubbish and certainly not enough for me to download anything on my Kindle. Imrie had written a hilarious novel about a group of people “of a certain age” retiring to the sunshine and then coming together to form their next venture. In this case, running a restaurant that unfortunately harbours secrets linked to the Mafia. ‘The Summer Seaside Kitchen’ took me to a windswept island of Mure (fictional) in Scotland and told the story of Flora; a paralegal who was sent to the island, where she originally came from, to help her boss Joel. She eventually decided to stay and run the Cafe after reconnecting with her family and cooking from her Mum’s old recipe book. It was a gorgeous story and made me want to go to this wonderful place and open the book shop I dream about running. I followed this with ‘The Little Beach Street Bakery’ which I read on our honeymoon in Italy and was transported to an island off the coast of Cornwall and Polly who escapes her relationship to bake bread on an island separated from the mainland by a causeway that floods twice a day. I have read some of the follow ups and have more yet to come.
One of Colgan’s books I read more recently was possibly my favourite so far. Nina the bookworm loses her job at her local library after cuts and downsizes are made (sound familiar to some people?) and so she invests in a large van that she eventually converts into a shop that she drives round the local Scottish villages selling the books she salvages from closed down libraries. On the way she meets farmers and locals and big strong men who whirl her around in the highland dances. I think I not only fell in love with the idea of a mobile book shop in these heavenly locations but also the farmer who wins her heart. The build up and pay off were just fantastic. Plus, the book was called ‘The Little Shop of Happy Ever After’, and what’s not to love about that?
Are these books cliches? Well I would argue that they are not. Yes, we have women who have occasionally come out of loveless and hard relationships that just don’t work anymore; but we also have women who have landed in circumstances beyond their control and so they take control of their lives in the ways they know best. They are independent, they are intelligent, they are smart. None of them uses their looks or changes their appearance for anyone. Instead, they get by on their brains and by taking a risk and seeing what happens. Sure, some of them seem to be able to pay their rent and bills without actually doing a lot at times. Yes sometimes they land on their feet a little too easily. But we are reading fiction here and sometimes it’s more fun to read about a character who manages to get by and get on without the reality of credit card bills or CCJs creeping in!
It’s not just Jenny Colgan for me – I have dabbled in Milly Johnson novels and have just been approved for ‘Sunshine at the Comfort Food Cafe’ by Debbie Johnson. There is just something wonderfully escapist about all of this. I am a teacher and teaching is a difficult and stressful job; I love it but it’s all of the above and more. My head is often rattling with Wilde, Shakespeare, poetry and Dickens and so I need a release. And these are just what I have been looking for. I curse the time I spent being a total book snob but then I also embrace it as in that time a whole back catalogue has opened up for my exploration. I have read my fair share of crime novels, I have read so much Dystopia that I had to back off as the future was not looking too bright, and I have even read ‘Fifty Shades of Pap’. We all need something to escape to, to experience, to look at through rose tinted glasses. The women in these tales do not have it easy, but they are funny and have some sass about them. Happily, none of them need to be rescued. They manage quite fine on their own thank you very much.
So am I converted? Oh yes. I currently have three Colgans racked up and ready and I am very excited to be going back to Mure and Cornwall and seeing how they are getting on. I want to be swept up in a blanket with gallons of tea and to be awash in a sea of loveliness. Ideally I’d be on a beach myself while reading it, but windy Lincoln will just have to do for now.