Saturday 28 May 2011

Coming Home for Christmas by Patricia Scanlan

I'm terrible, I really am - I have books that I'm reading and say I'm reading, and then I pick up other books entirely... in fact I started reading two other books in between the ones I said I was reading - and this is one of them!  It was a last minute grab as I passed the "quick pick" shelf on the way to check out my books at the library, and I'm not really sure why I went for it - except that every now and then it's nice to read fluff, and the cover was all Christmas and snow and stars, and who can resist that really?

Anyway - it was just what the cover promised.  Alison is an Irish girl in New York who's just been made redundant from her high-powered job and moved into a tiny studio flat.  Luckily she meets another new tenant, and he's a man from her own world - JJ, a carpenter and bespoke furniture maker who's had his own tragedy in life. Alison finds herself leaving their new friendship to go back home for her mother's seventieth birthday - long arranged - and is surrounded again by her family and all their warmth and love.

I must admit that it was all a little bit too perfect in some ways - it was a story about how important family are, and the joys of having children and living a good life.  It might be lovely to live like that, but not everyone has the sort of family Alison has, which gives it a rather dream-like quality in some ways - it's a fairytale of a book, where the world was wonderful but frivolous until the big bad wolf came along and showed our heroine the value of a modest but happy little cottage in the woods... And it's nice to dream about the cottage and wonder if it might come true, but... well, not everyone has an uncle who's done well enough to leave them a plot of land, and sometimes there are noisy neighbours, or leaking rooves, or... *g*

That said... I love fairytales as much as anything, and snuggling up inside when it's raining out, and memories of being sure that Father Christmas would come, and that moment of waking up after he had... So I thoroughly enjoyed this, even if it was a bit heavy-handed at times with it's description of how to live the right life... *g*

I'm going to have to read some "literature" soon, just to prove to myself on this bookblog that I do that too!

1 comment:

DesLily said...

we all need some fairy tales in our life so it reminds us to hope and dream for what is to come. it does slow down quite a bit once we are old unfortunately ..but that's life.
I've tried every day since you put this up to leave a comment but blogger keeps having me sign in when I am already signed in and won't post it! happy that I can finally comment again!!! I would have emailed by you didn't have an email on your profile. (if you don't want to give it out set up a second email account ..like Gmail and put that one in your profile?)