Pink Champagne and Apple Juice

I have just finished reading Anne Brooke's novel 'Pink Chmapagne and Apple Juice'. It is really good. Angie runs away from home and descends unnanounced on Uncle John - the black sheep of the family. He turns out to be a transvestite running his own club for like minded people in Muswell Hill. How Uncle John welcomes her into his home and yet manages not to 'corrupt' (her mother's word) her in the process makes for an amusing story. There are serious aspects to it though and Angie has to come to terms with John's role in the break up of her own family before the end of the story.

As might be expected the book is full of colourful and yet believable characters. Derek the doorman, Malcolm - Uncle John's lover, Philippe the French waiter and Heinrich the German chef who always cooks mushrooms. Thrown into the mix is Lisa - Angie's friend from university - who turns out to be lesss of a friend than might be expected. This is a brilliant story and it would make a good film or tv drama. Why it hasn't been snapped up by a main stream publisher I don't know. It deserves to become a classic like John Hadfield's 'Love on a Branch Line'.

It doesn't fit into any particular category and will still be readable in 20 years time. Go out and buy it! Anne Brooke has her own web site - www.annebrooke.com and a blog at www.annebrooke.blogspot.com.

I've also read Mary Nickson's 'Secrets and Shadows'. A group of people meet on a creative writing week in Scotland. All have secrets and shadows in their lives. Some are known to each other, some are strangers. All are changed by the course. Some find happiness where they least expected it others have a harsher future in front of them. Some have to make compromises and some find their ambitions are not realisable in the form they had hoped for. Interesting reading if you want a change from light fiction. This is still not heavy reading but it is more thought provoking than many.

I have just bought Ken Follett's 'Pillars of the Earth' which looks like a hefty read at over 1000 pages. It's about the building of a cathedral in the twelfth century. There is a sequel to it - recently published - 'World Without End'. On an epic scale I've bought John Cowper Powys' 'A Glastonbury Romance'. I've come across his books before mentioned in Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins series. www.philrickman.co.uk if you want more information.

Back to work tomorrow - I shall have to cut down on my reading then - not as much time.