Oh but I’ve been a terrible blogger this month. Terrible.
I’m not going to make any excuses because that would be totally pretending
people actually give a shit, which you know, it’s just a blog
and I’m pretty sure nobody does. I am however going to spend a quick few
minutes right now talking at you about a book I read a couple of weeks ago that
I totally should have already reviewed and haven’t because I’m terrible.
I don’t mean to be terrible, obvs. Sometimes you just need
to switch off your brain and watch Pretty Little Liars and
rewatch House and do a happy dance over all the
Klaine in season 6 of Glee, you know?
(always such a sucker for the pretty boys in love.) I’ve been all about the
television in July. I blame Netflix really, it’s just too easy to watch episode
after episode after episode. I wonder how many collective hours have been lost
to binge-watching since Netflix became a thing? It’s a thing both terrible and fabulous.
I haven’t just laid in my
bed watching American tv shows and stagnating though, I promise. There’s also
been house-hunting (both terrifying and exciting) and weddings (beautiful, with
books as favours, books as favours) and birthdays
(always fun times) and all manner of other fun stuff. We hired out a beach hut
for my Mum’s 60th the weekend before last which was all kinds of
glorious and segues quite nicely into the whole actual point of this post.
Which is this rather excellent book that people really ought
to be reading.
It’s called The Beach Hut
(I know, and I didn’t even do that intentionally. SERENDIPITY) and it’s by the
marvellous Cassandra Parkin who wrote The Summer We All Ran Away
which I read and loved last year. First things first, you can get hold of a copy of The Beach Hut right now, and you
should because it’s really really good. Really good.
S’about a brother and sister, Finn and Ava, who build an
(illegal?) beach hut on the Cornish coast, much to the chagrin of the landlord
of the local pub, Donald. Finn and Ava have this backstory that makes your
heart hurt, Donald’s a bit messed up –his wife has died and he’s really not at
all sure how to handle his teenage daughter, and she in turn has stuff of her
own going on – it’s a book about life I think,
really and the whole thing is actually kind of beautiful.
In a similar way to The Summer We All Ran Away
(again, grab a copy because holy smokes so good), The Beach Hut moves between the past and present pretty much
chapter by chapter. I loved this with The Summer We All Ran Away
and I love it again here. It’s quite a popular narrative device at the moment
it seems, the split timeline. I am reading so many books that tell me what’s
going on via then and now. Sometimes
it works and sometimes it doesn’t. This is one of those times that it
absolutely does. It also moves really seamlessly between the viewpoint of this
character and that and lets be real here, all these different voices and all
these different times and all these threads to all these stories. It could
quite easily have been a shitstorm. It’s not though, it works, and it works
really really well.
Also also, Cassandra Parkin has a knack for creating a cast
of characters that you believe in and relate to and really freaking care about. I mean, it, the people in this book, I just love
them so damn hard. Finn, I think, is the one I love the most, with his attitude
and his all-encompassing love for his sister and his sense of adventure and his
book of fairytales. I would like him to be my boyfriend. WHOOPS DID I SAY THAT
OUT LOUD? Also, Alicia: Cassandra Parkin is absolutely bang on with her portrayal
of mixed up teenage girl who wants to be simultaneously child and adult and her
relationship with her Dad is just so bittersweet – that’s a relationship that I
understand so well, the fragile one between father and daughter as daughter
moves beyond ‘little girl’ and into something else entirely. I am grateful
every day for the fact that my Dad and I got through that time (relatively)
unscathed. It’s not just that relationship that’s so on point here though you
know? The Beach Hut is a clever exploration of
relationships and of love: sibling, familial, romantic and it draws you in and
holds you as the story slowly unravels and HOLY SMOKES does it unravel. There’s
some stuff going on here that will grab you like an undercurrent and throw you
sideways. In a good way, not in a seawater in your face feel like your drowning
kind of way. Maybe that was a bad metaphor; it sounded better in my head. Anyway.
What I am trying to say is that there’s a sense of
immediacy to Parkin’s writing which I absolutely adore; I can not get enough of
her words and you know, I totally love it when a book grabs me and holds me
like that, makes me feel like I’m in another place. That’s what this book does.
Fun fact that I also really love: I read that the beach that
this book centres around is based on Perranporth in Cornwall. Yep, that totally makes me do a
happy dance. I love Perranporth. I’ve spent many
a happy hour on that beach, drinking rose lemonade and reading and there used
to be a restaurant just off the beach called The Tin Fin that
did the best calamari I ever tasted. I don’t think it’s there now which is a
shame. Anyway, I digress. This is a gorgeous book, I loved it and I really can’t
wait to see what Cassandra does next.
