Review of 'Welcome to Whitlock Close' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
A quiet but curiously satisfying little book – a trip back to the 1980s in an ordinary street with generally ordinary people, children and adults and several pets, as their lives criss-cross. Its depiction of the time – which I remember well – is perfectly coloured, and despite the usual insistence in the front matter that all characters are fictional, it is close to impossible to believe that this is other than a thinly described memoire of the time, perhaps drawing on childhood diaries in their detailed insistent focus on moments deeply felt at the time but usually forgotten later. It is set in an English middle class estate, which may make it seem even more quaint from an American perspective, though the family themes are universal. Apart from the inevitability of children growing up over the course of a year and some interesting changes of perspective about a few …
A quiet but curiously satisfying little book – a trip back to the 1980s in an ordinary street with generally ordinary people, children and adults and several pets, as their lives criss-cross. Its depiction of the time – which I remember well – is perfectly coloured, and despite the usual insistence in the front matter that all characters are fictional, it is close to impossible to believe that this is other than a thinly described memoire of the time, perhaps drawing on childhood diaries in their detailed insistent focus on moments deeply felt at the time but usually forgotten later. It is set in an English middle class estate, which may make it seem even more quaint from an American perspective, though the family themes are universal. Apart from the inevitability of children growing up over the course of a year and some interesting changes of perspective about a few of the characters, there is no clearly defined story arc to unify the book – rather it is a series of episodes, a few quite dramatic, but many of them closer and more intimate, building up into a detailed collage of figures and events. The effect is rather more cheerful than Breugel or Lowrie, but with a similar sense of small lives captured in their day by day intensity. I read this book at a moment of struggle in my life, and it comforted and refreshed me. Recommended.