Campari For Breakfast

De: Sara Crowe

Narrado por: Sara Crowe

Life is full of terrible things. Ghosts of dead relatives, heartbreak.... burnt toast.

In 1987, Sue Bowl's world changes for ever. Her mother dies, leaving her feeling like she’s lost a vital part of herself. And then her father shacks up with an awful golddigger called Ivana. But Sue’s mother always told her to make the most of what she’s got - and what she’s got is a love of writing and some interesting relatives. So Sue moves to her Aunt Coral’s crumbling ancestral home, Green Place, along with a growing bunch of oddballs and eccentrics. Not to mention the odd badger or two....

There she fully intends to write a book, fall in love, and learn to live decadently. Campari for Breakfast is a heart-warming, eccentric novel that joins the ranks of great British coming-of-age novels such as Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle and Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love.

©2014 Sara Crowe (P)2015 Random House Audiobooks

Not quite what I'd expected

I hadn't realized this was such a YA book. Sue, the 17 year old protagonist, came off as closer to 14 to me, very immature.

As a bit if plot re-hashing, which I normally avoid, her mother's just committed suicide, and she hates her dad's fiancée, so she's off to her Aunt Coral at her mother's family estate, or at least manse. At that point, some of the story is told in flashback form over Coral's lifetime from her journals; I liked that as an alternative to Sue mooning over a boy she can't have in the present. Coral's the best part of the story, although she's rather immature herself, at her best when leading the weekly writing seminars. Naturally, there's a villain as well, who becomes the girlfriend of the object of Sue's obsession. Never fear, by the end she's contrite, Sue learns that the truth about her parents wasn't what she'd assumed, her life is on track, and Coral is left with a rehabilitated manse, formerly a money pit, to run as a sort of guest house. Sorry for the spoilers, but most readers would see all that coming in a book where everything's tied up very neatly.

One of the few audiobooks where the author's own narration is probably better than a professional would have done.