When I found out that Elle McNicoll was releasing a new book I went straight online to West End Lane Books and ordered a signed copy. There are only a few authors that I will do that for, but after A Kind of Spark and Keedie captured my heart and my imagination, I knew I was on safe ground. So, what did I think? Well read on!
The Story
This book is the story of Jasper Montgomery. She is at a crossroads in her life, having decided to give up her university course and move away from her home town of Pristine Lake for good. She returns home to find out that her Queen Bee sister, Christine, is getting married and quite literally crashes the proposal! She is clever, kind and incredibly hardworking. She is also, like Elle McNicoll’s previous heroines, neurodivergent, but very few people in town know that as her mother is at pains to keep that particular ’embarrassment’ a secret. Jasper is coming home to say goodbye to the town and to complete a list of things she has given herself to do. Two things seem to be getting in the way. She finds that her sister’s wedding is the talk of the town and that it is only getting bigger day by day, requiring her to help out with all the arrangements, and she has also come back when her nemesis Arthur Lancaster is making a film about Lake Pristine for a competition that will net $10,000 for the winner, money that he wants to put towards refurbishing the old cinema of his Dad’s that he now runs. As she gets to know ‘Art’ better she is getting confusing signals, which is situation normal for someone who is autistic of course, but she starts to think that maybe the signals aren’t actually confusing at all. Throw in the problems her estranged best friend is having with her boyfriend and the fact that she is directing The Nutcracker for her Mother’s ballet school, and Jasper is stretched to breaking point. When the rough cut of the film is shown with her and her sister heavily featured things get even more complicated. How is she going to tell everyone about university and finish her list before leaving Lake Pristine?
My thoughts
The idea of a neurodivergent romantic heroine was something that instantly intrigued me, particularly one written by a neurodivergent author who can communicate the reality of life on the autistic spectrum so brilliantly and so honestly. She has always been in the shadow of her sister, the queen of Lake Pristine, a situation reflected in Art’s sarcastic nickname for her, ‘Princess’. However, this isn’t a narrative of an ugly duckling turning into a swan, because the really fascinating thing about Jasper, is that her masking is so successful that she is actually incredibly popular in Lake Pristine. I had rarely seen an autistic character written like that before, and it was such a breath of fresh air. It’s marvellous to see the usual misfit narrative turned on its head and to see a socially successful character. Everyone, apart from Art apparently, loves her and values her for herself, although of course it isn’t her true self. Given this affection she inspires, why hasn’t she attracted more interest? When I think back to my own teenage years, albeit the polar opposite socially, I was totally ill equipped to enter into any romantic relationship. I either imagined a connection that wasn’t there or completely missed a connection that was – every single time! In this respect, Jasper is absolutely in tune with my teenage self.
Jasper has a huge amount of creativity, and design is her true passion, but people around her are reluctant to see it as anything more than a hobby. Her mother has always been extremely hard on her and made her dance until her feet bled in ballet class, whilst giving everyone else a much easier time. Jasper sees it as a reflection of her lack of perfection that her mother has seen since the diagnosis and which she seems to be punishing her for. It is her father who quietly supports her in everything except for her ambition to be a professional designer. We see a young woman forced into a family induced straitjacket of studying law which her parents are paying for. As they won’t pay for a design course, seeing it as a degree with no prospects, Jasper is saving every penny she can. This feeling of being pushed in the wrong direction for your talents is one I am very familiar with but unlike Jasper I never felt I was really in a position to plough my own furrow.
The supporting characters are so well drawn that you become immersed in Lake Pristine from the outset. Art is extremely complex with a number of threads that we have to unravel along with Jasper. His father has died leaving him as a surrogate parent to his little sister, Grace. His cousin, Marcus, is editing the film but it seems that he may be going his own way when putting together the final version. Odette, Jasper’s childhood best friend, is going out with Craig and the already strained relationship between the formerly inseparable duo looks like it could break down altogether with Jasper’s determination to show that Craig is bad news. Christine Montgomery is demanding, occasionally downright unpleasant, but is she more vulnerable than even Jasper realises?
Elle McNicoll drew me in to the world of Addie and Keedie and I really cared about the characters, but I grew to care about Jasper’s world even more. The town became utterly familiar to me as the story progressed and I wanted to learn more about the people in it, especially Art’s sister Grace, in many ways the second beating heart of the story. The romance was beautifully handled, avoiding cliché and easy sentiment throughout. Finally, the ending was simply perfect whilst, hopefully, leaving open the possibility of revisiting Jasper once again. For so long, The List of Suspicious Things was my favourite book of the year. This has now joined it and whatever age you are this wintry YA romance will enchant you and leave you feeling warm inside.
Finally, I must just give a shout out to West End Lane Books who have teamed up with Elle McNicoll to provide signed copies of this book and also Keedie. The book itself has a gorgeous cover and a lovely bookmark to go with it. It was simply the icing on the cake as far as I was concerned.
Scouting for Girls, Callum Beatie and Vince Freeman at O2 Kentish Town October 10 2024
When I go to a concert, I always have a picture in my mind of what type of audience the headliners will attract. Generally my picture is fairly accurate, but that definitely wasn’t the case the other night when I went to see Scouting for Girls. Their first chart success was as far back as 2007 so I was expecting a largely Millennial audience, but I was surprised by the number of Gen Z fans like my daughter and her friend in particular who were in primary school when Scouting for Girls saw their initial success.
Vince Freeman
Vince Freeman wasn’t a name I was familiar with before the night, but I am always interested in the support acts so I was pleased to see and listen to someone new. He has been around the scene for a while but, as he wryly announced, his debut album had been a long time coming! Not surprising when he spent six years in pain with two prolapsed discs and a degenerative spinal condition. Even during those years he never gave up, gigging whenever he could despite being unable to carry his equipment or walk without a stick. Then, just as he finally recovered, Covid shut down the whole of UK entertainment. He then sold coffee at events from his own coffee truck as well as performing. His is an inspiring story of someone paying more than his dues and finally getting a taste of deserved success. The title of his album, Scars, Ghosts and Glory is a great reflection of his journey so far. I only found out the back story after the gig, but as soon as I listened to his voice I just said to myself ‘There’s someone who has so much experience of life’. The depth to his singing clearly comes from the challenges he has overcome. Blame Myself has echoes of Gnarls Barkley in the percussive delivery and his defiance and determination shine through. Although he has clearly taken more knocks than most people could deal with he has decided to hold himself accountable as a way of coming to terms with the hand that life has dealt him. It is a defiant track that epitomises his hard won experience. Imposter is a brilliant example of the connection I immediately felt with him and a story I didn’t yet know about. He sounds like George Ezra or Ed Sheeran at times, but he has that store of pain and struggle which gives his voice that quality of authenticity that only experience can give to you. The lyrics could have been triumphal, but Freeman sings them as a message of catharsis which is really effective. He is a singer who truly values the opportunity to sing to large crowds and they haven’t taken long to warm to him if Thursday night was anything to go by. The final song of his set was The Singer which mentions the voice in his soul, a soul which has overcome so much adversity. Well, all I can say is that this singer is one that genuinely deserves whatever success he achieves from now on.
Callum Beattie
Scottish singers have always been favourites of mine over the years, from Rod Stewart onwards. Callum Beattie is another in a long line of artists from the heartland of folk and rock who has impressed me from pretty much the first time I heard him. Vocally he definitely brought to mind early Rod Stewart at times with his power and the growling delivery. 25 seconds was a rocking start to his set that had the audience dancing and singing along pretty much straight away. Let Me Fall is a guitar driven song that is extremely catchy and has another great chorus. Vandals is the opening track to his most recent album and reflects teenage misdemeanours that have an air of fond nostalgia when you look back on them. It’s a relatable track for many people, whatever their own misdemeanours were! Something in my Eye was my favourite track from the set with its lovely tune and reflective lyrics. It’s the type of song that washes over you and makes you feel happy but has that undercurrent of wistful longing that makes it so appealing. The set finished with the swelling chords of Heart Stops Beating, a song that contains some excellent lyrics that reflect the rush of love in those early days of a relationship where you somehow know that you have found the one.
Scouting for Girls
I last saw Scouting for Girls in 2015 when they were touring the album Still Thinking About You which, by the way, contains one of the best Christmas singles of the last 20 years, Christmas in the Air (Tonight), which was criminally ignored by radio stations. Do yourself a favour and check it out in the next couple of months, it’s simply terrific! At that time I thought that Roy Stride was one of the most energetic frontmen in the business. In the last nine years he seems to have got even more energetic! He was immediately in top form and started with a track from their most recent album The Place We Used to Meet called The Missing Part. It’s not an album or indeed a song I was particularly familiar with, but I definitely intend to rectify that very soon. The next song raised the roof, and the bar, really early on as he launched the band into their early smash hit Heartbeat. The Gen Z fans around me proved to be word perfect as they belted it out. My personal highlight of the night came quite early on with the nostalgic Michela Strachan, a song that speaks to the 12 year old boy in so many of us that had a TV crush. At that age, it was Julie Dawn Cole in Angels and Isla St Clair in The Generation Game for me! The crushes may change but the feelings never do. My daughter and her friend were up and dancing for the next track, I Wish I was James Bond, which the audience sang perhaps more loudly than pretty much anything else during the night with perhaps one exception.
Roy then told the story of how far back the group went. Their first gig was in the Bull and Gate, the pub next door to the venue 25 years earlier, to the day, before they were even called Scouting for Girls. He met Greg Churchouse, the bassist, on the first day of secondary school and the drummer Pete Ellard on the first day of primary school! This shared history is what makes them the utterly engaging and enjoyable band that they are. Roy and Pete sang in front of an audience for the first time at cub camp so they brought out a ‘campfire’ that looked like a Blue Peter make and somehow seemed totally right for the evening! One of the songs around the campfire was Kumbaya which immediately gave me flashbacks to my own scouting days! The more reflective campfire mood disappeared almost immediately with the next song which had the whole audience on their feet. Posh Girls is catchy, funny, saucy and utterly irresistible with one of the best choruses I’ve ever heard. It was a song that saw Roy not only go into the crowd in the stalls, but also come up to the balcony, which is something you hardly ever see, but it really brought us into the action in a way that is missed in other venues. The ‘Boys in School’ refrain raised the roof every time and its ability to make me smile all these years later is priceless.
Lead guitar on the night was played by Nick Tsang who has been touring with the band for the last couple of years after stints with a number of other acts. One of his previous jobs was playing with Busted which gave Scouting for Girls the opportunity to play Year 3000, a song that has the same nudge nudge humour that so many of their own songs have. It was a perfect fit, but it did make me wonder anew how Busted had worked on the basis that only five generations had passed in 1000 years! The next song, Raising a Glass, comes from The Place We Used to Meet and when Roy announced that a video to accompany it was being shot there and then, the crowd went wild. He went into the crowd again and found out that Callum was 18 on that very night so he had the whole venue sing Happy Birthday to him! The final song before the encore was Elvis Ain’t Dead which segued into Can’t Help Falling in Love With You, both songs sung with real gusto, particularly by the left hand side where we were who beat the rest of the audience hands down! The evening ended with She’s So Lovely which raised the roof once again and reminded us, as if we needed it, of Scouting for Girls’ enduring ability to pen a tune with the best of them.
The night was great from beginning to end and the headline act showed that not only is there life left in them, but that they are in fact getting better. They clearly love playing live and their audience love seeing them, and I can’t see either situation changing for a long time. Now, as you’ve read this far, go and listen to Christmas in the Air (Tonight) and lets get the guys the Christmas hit they deserve.
It’s been nearly nine months since I last did one of these, so for any new readers it is a trawl through my somewhat enormous 7″ single collection in its entirety. Yes, the good, the bad, the weird and the downright appalling! I leave nothing out because at one time I enjoyed all these singles. If you want to catch up with the As to the Ms you can find them all grouped together in the category ‘A -Z of my singles collection’ so feel free to have a look at any of them. So, without further ado, let’s get into the Ns and the Os.
So, we start off with two novelty records from very different eras. First, it’s Napoleon XIV with the very funny They’re coming to take me away (Ha-haaa) which was first released in 1966 reaching Number 3 in the US charts and Number 4 in the UK charts. Apparently, it is about an ungrateful dog that has destroyed its owner’s mental health! To continue the theme of mental disintegration the B side is the A side played backwards which is hands down the strangest track in the entirety of my record collection! Despite its disappearance from the airwaves in these different times, those of us who liked it will often recall its title in moments of stress and frustration! Neil from The Young Ones (played by Nigel Planer) reached Number 2 in the charts in 1984 with his cover of the Traffic track Hole in my Shoe. The character of Neil was a permanently spaced out hippy so the trippy lyrics were a perfect fit for him. The TV and cultural success of The Young Ones meant that chart success of this song was pretty much guaranteed. Listening nowadays it’s a definite cultural time capsule, but it still brings a smile to my face all these years later.
99 Red Balloons by Nena is an encapsulation of the fear of nuclear war that affected all areas of culture in the 1980s. You had Threads on TV, When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs in book form and as a film, Wargames in the cinema and a number of singles released by a whole range of artists. You had Dancing with tears in my eyes by Ultravox, I won’t let the sun go down on me by Nik Kershaw, Hammer to fall by Queen and Two Tribes by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Of these, Nena’s is perhaps the one that comes to mind most readily because of her performance and the imagery in the translated version. The ending in particular where she finds one of the 99 Red Balloons that caused such devastation is extremely effective in its understatement. All these years later, Nena’s song is still one of the most recognisable of the entire sub-genre of nuclear songs.
A couple of Olivia Newton John singles next, though oddly enough nothing from Grease. The first is her Eurovision song contest entry from 1974 where she represented the UK called Long Live Love. The song was selected after a public vote following her performances of 6 different songs on a show called Clunk Click! Although I have always loved the song it turns out that she was convinced that the public had made the wrong choice and that they should have voted for Angel Eyes. However, 1974 was of course the year of ABBA’s Waterloo so nothing else stood a chance anyway. The other single of hers is Landslide, the follow up to her massive hit, Physical, a record I never really liked. Mind you, I preferred Sandy before the makeover so that says a lot about my preference for the sweet over the strident!
The final pair of Ns could not be more different. Nilsson’s Without You is one of the saddest songs ever recorded. Sung with a depth of feeling and a subtlety that the famous cover completely misses, it trawls the depths of the human experience of lost love in a way few other pieces of music have ever matched. It’s one of those songs that has the same effect on my head and my heart every time I listen to it. The Nolans I’m in the mood for dancing is simply one of the most joyful records ever made. Whatever your mood, it is one record that is almost guaranteed to make it better with its infectious tune and uplifting chorus. It is a dance track that unites generations and just makes the world seem like a better place.
Billy Ocean is one of the UK’s most successful singer songwriters of the last 50 years. He had three US Number 1 hits along with four other Top 10s, whilst in the UK he had a single Number 1 and five other Top 10s. I saw him live at the Royal Albert Hall a few years back and he was absolutely brilliant with the voice and the charisma still intact. The three singles of his in my collection were released in 1985 and 1986 and cover three of his biggest UK hits, Suddenly, When the going gets tough and There’ll be sad songs (to make you cry). Each of them showcases his amazing voice of course, but also his ability to speak directly to the listener and influence their emotions with well chosen words or key changes. This is timeless music that will find a new audience with each succeeding generation.
Hazel O’Connor was in many ways my first punk favourite, although I had enjoyed some of the earlier tracks in that genre. She came along when I was 15 and exactly the right age to expand my horizons musically. Eighth Day is one of the greatest dystopian songs ever. The story of science gone too far, self aware machines that turn on us and an uninhabitable planet sounds more like current affairs these days! Her passion, soaring vocals with that veneer of nihilism and the intense tune blend together to make Eighth Day a record like no other. As a bonus, you have one of the best B Sides ever recorded with the social commentary of Monsters in disguise, which deals with the corrupt officials in ‘bowler hats and old school ties’. It came at a time when I was starting to wonder if the powers that be really did have our best interests at heart so it definitely made me think about what I was reading and hearing. Now, of course, I know they don’t so this song again sounds like its bang up to date. Please seek it out on YouTube. It’s amazing. D Days is a song just made for pogoing around the dance floor with its exhortation of ‘Going out dancing, pose, pose’ and the shout along chorus announcing that ‘These are decadent days’ to keep the energy levels high throughout the song. It’s another great punk style song. However, Hazel O’Connor is best known by many for the incredible ballad ‘Will you?’ which starts off with perhaps the most atypical lines of any ballad ‘You drink your coffee and I sip my tea’ before moving into a story of uncertain feelings that may or may not be love. These feelings explode and lead in to one of the greatest saxophone solos ever recorded. Three tracks, all completely different and each of them completely brilliant. Hazel O’Connor was a shooting star in chart terms, although she continued making excellent music long after her popular successes, making everyone sit up and take in her brilliance before vanishing.
Now on to OMD, one of my favourite groups. I saw them live as the support act to Aha a few years back and they overshadowed the main act in a way I have never seen before or since with confidence, humour and the most amazing collection of brilliant tracks. I have five of those tracks in my singles collection starting with Enola Gay, the hard hitting recounting of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, now being used on a commercial featuring an exercise shy dog! Suffice to say I will never think of that advert when listening to the original, but I do which they had been a little more choosy with who they sold the keyboard riff to. Next we have one of my favourite tracks of all time, which still leaves me awestruck every time I hear it. Souvenir has a justifiable claim to be the greatest synthpop tune of all time in my opinion. When I heard it live I actually had tears in my eyes, such was the beauty of the experience. The next two singles showcase the two sides of their output with the dance track Locomotion which was a staple of every disco at the time and Talking Loud and Clear which epitomises the beauty they were able to imbue the simplest tune with. Finally, we have La Femme Accident, bought after a recommendation from one of my best friends at the time. It took a while for me to really warm to it, but I now rate it as one of the nicest tracks in their hugely impressive discography.
So, that’s the end of Part 11 of my singles collection, and also Part 4 of my Spotify playlist covering these singles. If you want to hear everything from Loggins to OMD, just click here See you next time for the Ps!!
This post has been inspired by two separate things. First, the experience of seeking out novelty songs for my late September Twitter challenge #Welltheresanovelty. Second, an article in The Guardian by Zach Schonfeld about films and TV shows which appeared today (October 1, 2024). It made me reflect on the role of physical media in my life and how curating that social and personal history is now more important than ever.
Disappearing musical history
I started collecting records in January 1974 when I bought Billy Howard’s single King of the Cops. Now, I would be the first to admit that it doesn’t stand the test of time, but the B side, Bond is a four letter word, definitely does. However, if I didn’t have the 7 inch single in my possession, that piece of personal history would be irretrievable on Spotify, the dominant force in streaming and the trend setter for the modern music experience. Do I think King of the Cops would have a renaissance if it was available on Spotify? Of course not, because apart from it not being particularly funny when listened to objectively, how many people now remember Ironside, McCloud or Cannon? The novelty single market is not particularly well served on Spotify with obvious gaps, for example, the whole of Not The Nine O’ Clock News, The Original Muppet Show Cast albums, all the Spitting Image songs, either Captain Beaky single by Keith Michell or The Oldest Swinger in Town by Fred Wedlock.
During December 2022, I took part in Blogmas and included an entry about Isla St Clair’s Christmas album entitled Isla I wrote to Isla to let her know about my entry and it turned out that she didn’t have the rights to it and it was nowhere to be seen on Spotify. Happily Isla has now rectified the situation and all 12 songs from an absolutely gorgeous Christmas album can be found here. It is still not on Spotify, so it will continue to be a pleasure only for those who know about it, which now includes you! I am very pleased to think that my small blog played a part in reuniting both Isla and the internet with such a lovely album, but if I hadn’t had a physical copy in the first place it may have remained lost in time, at least as far as the internet is concerned.
I am aware that my examples may not seem important to some, but musically we are in danger of losing some nuggets of gold amongst the tons of detritus. Remember that every record you dislike was bought by perhaps many people at the time and deserves to be preserved to reflect the huge variety of music available throughout past eras.
What happened to that film?
As Zach Schonfeld observes in his excellent article, Hollywood is deliberately reducing the amount of film and TV available to us on both streaming services and the internet. This is done for a variety of reasons, that may be financial or cultural in nature, but whatever the underlying reason they impoverish us as consumers of popular culture. I have studied popular culture in my spare time, and it is not unusual to see this situation occur. For example, folk songs in the days before musical notation became available to the masses, and before even the most rudimentary recording devices were available, were lost in time because they were considered unimportant by those with influence. Classical music was seen as superior to folk music, especially as folk music told the stories of ordinary lives which those in power have always been disinterested in, so the latter was allowed to fade. That fading of our cultural history would have been even more complete had it not been for far sighted individuals such as Cecil Sharp, Lucy Broadwood and Ralph Vaughan Williams who collected songs from across the UK either written down or recorded on wax cylinders. If you want the full story this Historia Magazine article is fascinating. Schonfeld recounts the inadvertent cultural vandalism that means we have lost 90% of the silent films made before the advent of talkies, because they were considered disposable and were not valuable in a financial or cultural sense. In the case of Charlie Chaplin he destroyed all the negatives of one of his films as a tax write off! In the early days of the internet, you could find a number of websites that would do DVD copies of films that were out of print or were withheld for various reasons. Sadly, these websites have been closed down by the companies that hold the original rights, even though they have no intention of releasing the material themselves. For me, the saddest situation concerns Richard Williams magnificent 1971 version of A Christmas Carol. I had the foresight to get one of these unofficial DVDs which I love revisiting, but for everyone else it has been locked away in a vault somewhere for decades, probably being damaged by neglect, because of rights issues. There are a number of rumours as to who has it in their possession, but let’s just say that I will not accuse anyone on here because I cannot afford the libel case! Whatever the facts, it has been unseen on television and on DVD and is fading from our cultural memories. It contains amazing voice performances, chiefly by Alastair Sim reprising his role as Scrooge 20 years after his portrayal became the benchmark by which all other Scrooges are judged. How can we let a treasure like that languish in a vault or even a mouse trap if the rumours are true! Many of my favourite shows from the past never even had a VHS release. For example, the excellent ITV version of Vice Versa starring Peter Bowles and Iain Cuthbertson has never appeared in any format.
The wholesale destruction of BBC and ITV programmes from the 50s, 60s and 70s is well known, and, if it hadn’t have been for the fans who obsessively recorded every episode, whole stories of Doctor Who would have been lost for ever. They were not to know that the wiping of their beloved programme was going to take place, it was just a piece of huge luck for the BBC who were increasingly embarrassed by their short sighted approach to their archive. What about now? Who is recording and more importantly keeping episodes of The Powerpuff Girls or Dexter’s Laboratory, two marvellous cartoons that have recently gone behind a paywall? No one, because we assumed that we would always be able to access them freely. I have a library of DVDs covering a whole range of films and TV, many of which are still available, but some of which are not. I have seen content on YouTube deleted, shows disappear from view on streaming services such as Netflix or get cut to pieces when they are shown, for various reasons. We never know which one of our favourite series or films is the next candidate for online oblivion.
For all of you who, like me, have a huge library of vinyl, DVD and Blu-ray, don’t be tempted to downsize. Keep hold of it, even when you move, because that is something that can never be taken away from you at the whim of a TV, film or music executive who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Somewhat of a misnomer this week as these are two new books borrowed from Rainham Library, but as I said at the start of the challenge we really must support our local libraries. So, this week, we continue one series of books and complete another.
Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch
The fifth book in the Rivers of London series sees PC Peter Grant travel outside London for the first time, where he is sent to investigate the disappearance of two girls, Nicole Lacey and Hannah Marstowe that may have a supernatural element. The search for the two girls takes him to Hereford and Worcestershire where his liaison, DC Dominic Croft, gets a crash course in weird phenomena. Inspector Nightingale sends Beverly Brook to keep him company and negotiate with supernatural beings. The plot twist from Book 4 bubbles away under the surface, but, as it turns out, that is perhaps the least important part of the book. Beverly shows herself to be a very effective partner for Peter, personally and professionally, and their growing relationship is a delight. In typical Aaronovitch style the book wrongfoots us plot wise, but I obviously won’t spoil it. Suffice to say I got to the end of the first part completely confused as to where it was headed next, but the second half was just as much of a delight. We meet Hugh Oswald, a contemporary of Nightingale who was involved in Ettersberg, and his daughter Melissa, both of whom give an insight into the wizarding life outside the capital. This is all part of the deepening folklore of the Rivers of London series which has made it such a great series to read. As ever, I wholeheartedly recommend this book, but you do definitely need to have read Books 1 – 4 before you tackle this one as a certain amount of familiarity with the rest of the series is a must. Roll on Book 6!
Forever Geek by Holly Smale
This is the sixth and last full length novel in the brilliant Geek Girl series. As with any favourite series, there is a simultaneous excitement at seeing it reach a conclusion and a sadness that this is it, unless the author decides to revisit the character later on in their writing career. Whilst keeping my fingers crossed for the latter, I am very happy to report that if we never see Harriet Manners again, her story is brought to the most satisfying possible conclusion, however bittersweet it might be.
Harriet finds herself on a flight to Australia with grandmother Bunty and best friend Nat. Harriet’s aim is to help Nat’s designs get out to a wider audience, whilst also enjoying a holiday with her grandmother. The modelling seems to be a little more unplanned than expected, although Harriet has decided to be spontaneous, as far as she can be anyway! She has a strict schedule of calls with new boyfriend Jasper, taking into account time zones and his restaurant shifts, but that schedule is ruined soon after she lands when Harriet breaks her new smartphone and is given the most old fashioned mobile possible by Bunty. The trouble for the new, more spontaneous, Harriet is that where she makes spur of the moment decisions they lead to total chaos. For example, her first self-sourced modelling job sees her sailing out to the Great Barrier Reef with a very hazy idea of what she is doing, dressed in an outfit that is falling apart bit by bit. This leads to a series of events that even Harriet’s many fans will not have foreseen.
Holly Smale finds a way to bring back all of the main characters for a final turn on the catwalk. Wilbur was in the background this time, but he makes the most of his appearances in this finale. Nick aka Lion Boy and fearsome fashion designer Yuka Ito play pivotal roles in this book and it’s a delight to see them both. Harriet’s parents are largely heard or mentioned rather than seen, but like Wilbur their stories have been nicely concluded in previous books.
I love Geek Girl and I love Australia so this book was always going to be a favourite of mine. There was more seriousness than perhaps had been apparent in previous books, but that was right given Harriet’s changing nature, and the ending left me quite emotional with its beauty and insight. However, this is Geek Girl, so Harriet leaves you with a smile on your face and a lift in your spirits. It truly is one of the crowning glories of Young Adult writing and whatever your age it is a delight. I just hold out the faint hope that Harriet might come back, older, wiser but just as chaotic!
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 