Something for the weekend..

Hello & welcome back to Charing Cross Read - Blackwell's Charing cross road Blog. We hope you had a relaxing & enjoyable Christmas & New Year break & are ready to get back to some serious reading! We have some tempting, tasty & tremendous events on the horizon. But just to ease you  back in here's a little something for the weekend..

The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher

Except it's not little it's a whopper! Yes it's another 'Something for the weekend' that you'd have to be a secret robot to actually read in a weekend.

Hensher's Northern odyssey begins in Sheffield 1974 & at the beginning it may remind you of the piquant humour of Alan Bennett or 'Abigails party' - all cocktail sausages & gossipy neighbours. The devil is in the detail for Hensher as we follow his wonderfully well drawn characters through the years. He makes you care about there (admittedly) fairly ordinary lives.

That's not to say it's without incident, but this is more about how the people react to events than the events themselves.It's about how peoples actions can reverberate through time. As the intertwined stories move through the years you will be touched, amused but most importantly you will need to know what happens & that is all down to Hensher's skillfull prose.

A joy from to start to finish -  it's one of those books that you just know you will one day read again.

Gary

Buy it here