The narrative hovers a little uneasily
between humour and tragedy, but despite the flaws and the author’s tendency to
over-egg the pudding, it is an entertaining read. (Review by Margaret von
Klemperer, courtesy of The Witness)
Menopause, for so long unmentionable, has suddenly become hot news (no pun intended) in fact and fiction. In this novel, Amazing Grace Adams, Fran Littlewood uses it as one of the plot and narrative strands. The story opens with Grace Adams abandoning her car in the middle of a London traffic jam – she has cracked. We know she is trying to get to her daughter Lotte who is turning 16, and who has been playing truant from school, but at this stage we know nothing else.
The story then goes back to 2002 and the first meeting between Grace and Ben, her-husband-to-be, at a conference for clever linguists. This is lively and entertaining stuff, but it is only a short interlude. The structure of the novel is shortish chapters, alternating between the single day when Grace abandons her car and her subsequent adventures, or, more accurately disasters, and events between 2002 and the present. There is finally an epilogue which ties up loose ends.
As Grace struggles to get to the Love Island cake she has ordered for Lotte, and to deal with the difficulties of getting across London on foot on a hot day, we discover that Lotte is with her father, and doesn’t want to see her mother, or to have her at the party. And slowly we discover why, and what has happened, besides the menopause, to send Grace so dramatically off the rails. The mood darkens as we find out more about the intervening years between when Grace and Ben were young, clever and hopeful for what was to come and the now, when they are middle-aged, with a past rather than a future.
It is a good idea, but the structure Littlewood has chosen does eventually leave the reader feeling that the book is proceeding in hiccups – just as we get involved in one strand of the story, we are back to Grace’s journey and then on to something else. And there were moments, before the whole backstory was revealed, when I began to feel like shouting at Grace to get a grip - you can’t blame everything on being menopausal.
The narrative hovers a little uneasily between humour and tragedy, but despite the flaws and the author’s tendency to over-egg the pudding, it is an entertaining read. - Margaret von Klemperer
Amazing Grace Adams is published by Michael Joseph. ISBN 978-0-241-54852-3
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