Books we like ... and books we're not too fussed about
Lilie Ferrari
Michael Joseph 1996
I enjoyed this novel. It tells of a group of friends growing up in the 1960s, bound together by their love of the Beatles. The best chapters for me were the early ones, describing with painful accuracy a rural Norfolk that rang very true with my memories of the same area ten years on. Later I think the novel suffered a bit from its clearly autobiographical nature: Ferrari seems unsure about what to leave in and what to leave out, and so leaves most of it in, and that makes it appear rather unfocused and even rambling at times. Truth is perhaps too messy for fiction – and she is clearly very close to her subject. The girls’ relentless obsession with the Beatles, extending into their twenties, seemed pretty far-fetched to me, but when I read on the author’s blog that as recently as two years ago she burst in to tears when she remembered that George Harrison had died, I realised that it was all too believable. This is an endearing novel that effectively conjures up its time and place – and is well worth a read.
24 January 2012
http://www.lilieferrari.co.uk/
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