Let your heart sing of love to it's content (A Little Love Song - Michelle Magorian)

Member Name: angiebabyqueen

Product:	A Little Love Song - Michelle Magorian
Date:	21/03/06 (831 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A brilliant chick lit book, with such romantic gestures in, and heartache.

Disadvantages: I could sense who Rose would end up with at the start

As author of goodnight mister tom, while browsing my library shelves the other week, I came across this book, and as soon as the cover said Michelle Magorian, I was intrigued. If any of you have ever seen goodnight mister tom, or have read it then it is a brilliant book, and I had to study it for our year nine essay. I thoroughly enjoyed the book at the time, and thought that Michelle was a fab author. When I found that this book was all about falling in love, and aimed towards young adults to read, I was straight in there. As many of you know, I am a fan of chick literature and enjoy this kind of book. If you don’t like this genre of book, I warn you to read no further. Otherwise carry on and read a review on a brilliant book.

*The Story*

set during the second world war, two sister’s have been sent down to the coast to live for the summer, while their mother has gone away to entertain the British soldiers abroad. Their mother is an actress, and so is their mother’s best friend, but she’s stayed in England however, performing in the city in which they were bought up in, Birmingham. Their aunt em is just about to audition for the Birmingham rep and so they can’t stay with her, and their father died in action last year. So here the girls are, in a tiny village of Salmouth, on the British coast. The girls have paid for two months at a house two miles walk outside of the village, but don’t realise this until they get there. When rose arrives in salmouth, she asks a lady the directions to the cottage where they’re staying, and makes friends with Mrs Clarence straight away. She makes her way up to the church to wait for her sister, the swan of the family, the beautiful older sister, Diana. So instead of waiting a little longer for Diana to cycle up, rose decides to go off exploring the village and comes across a lovely book shop, and meets the owner briefly. We see here that rose wants to spend her entire time down in salmouth writing her stories and reading her books.

But the thing is, is that the woman that their mother trusted her girls to live with, has been called up and so they will be living on their own, and with Diana not being happy about this, and wanting to phone their mother, to go back to their old home, and stopping their mother from going abroad to live out her dream, rose stops her, and so they stay for the summer in salmouth. They do have the spooky Mr partridge to contend with however, who swears the cottage is haunted by mad Hilda, and has managed to drive out his last lot of tenants by spooking them out with horror stories, but rose and Diana have decided not to let it get to them. There is one locked room however, and they can’t seem to get into it, until one day, rose finds the key to the room, with all of mad Hilda’s stuff in, including many diaries in which relates to the whole plot of the story. Rose reads the diaries piece by piece and it interlinks perfectly with the story.

During all this time however, rose ends up making many visits down to the book shop, and meets Alec, the bookshop owner properly, and sits, talks, and finds herself talking about everything with him. She can’t stop herself, and values her friendship with him, but knows there’s much more to find out about him. While coming out of the shop, she bumps into Derry, Alec’s cousin, and aged seventeen, the same age as rose herself. They don’t speak immediately, but later in the story, they become friends, and hopes that he might one day fall in love with her. But there’s another thing that rose wants to do – learn how to swim. She’s been told by Mr Partridge that she won’t be able to access the beach unless she goes by boat, but rose has other plans of how to get down there. And a few days later, she meets Derek properly, otherwise known as Derry, and he agrees to teach her how to swim.

But when she introduces him to Diana, she sees, just like all the other guys, that he is besotted with Diana’s beauty. To Diana, this has always been a problem, due to the fact that all the male population she meets can’t have a proper conversation with her, just stutters and mumbles. Even her father treated her that way. Rose was always able to relate to her father and talk to him, even if he did push her into going to a private girl’s school to finish her exams, which is another problem for rose. She hates her all girls school, and can only leave if she passes all her exams, which she has a feeling she has failed once again, but she has to wait until the end of the summer to find out.

We then also meet Dot. She has become pregnant, without being married and her parents kicked her out of the house which is why she is down here. But she never got married to the love of her life because her parents didn’t like the fact that she wanted to become married, and so when the man of her life could possibly be dead, somewhere unforeseen, with her pregnant, then being stuck in a hostel with both married and unmarried mothers is a nightmare for her. But she manages to get out, and sees Mrs Clarence frequently, also turning up for women’s meetings. Diana meets her first, and they become really good friends, but then rose gets to hear about her, and like most people back then, young unmarried mothers are frowned upon. Rose isn’t happy about this, and starts to bad mouth dot without even meeting her first. But when she does finally meet dot, she’s glad she’s met her because she’s a great friend to her, and she’s able to relate to her. This book teaches you not to prejudge someone before meeting them.

During this time in which they spend there, they find that they can do more than they’ve ever been able to do. Diana finds her true love, at her 21st birthday, with Mrs Clarence’s son who has come back for a few days on leave from his post in the armed forces abroad. He proposes to Diana, and they become engaged, but as soon as they’ve become engaged, he has to go away again, and go back into fighting grounds. This means long hours of worrying when he doesn’t phone or write when he says he will and interferes with Diana’s life. Will Robert ever come back alive?

While Diana is around Mrs Clarence’s waiting for a phone call or a letter, this leaves the house to Rose all alone, and doesn’t Derry know it. Derry is after one thing, and will do anything to get it. He tells rose all sorts of lies to get to it, and she finds herself getting in too deep, not wanting to do anything, not being ready, and we see an insight of some girls back then. Derry has a past, and can’t get into the air forces due to various reasons, but Rose doesn’t know this, and he comes back one night saying that he got the scores he wanted from his exams to get into the armed forces, and that he’s signed up. He’s going into the air force in a few days and wants to remember everything about her. He’s lying to her, and yet she can’t see it, but she knows she doesn’t love him, and that she doesn’t want to do anything, but she wants to make him happy. So she goes ahead and does it. She didn’t enjoy it or anything, and regrets it straight away. Derry expects it the next night as well, but instead, dot comes round, and ends up in labour. Derry flees at the sign of the first lot of contractions, and that’s the last we see of him in the book. But that doesn’t stop the hurt and pain that rose is going through with it all. At this point in the book, we really interact with rose and our heart goes out to her.

The thing that really strikes the reader in this book is the fact that Rose thinks she’s so ugly, unlovable, and that her insecurities really shine through. Yet, we see the inner beauty of all the characters, and Rose prejudges a few of them before hand, and then letting the inner beauty shine through themselves. She judges people by their looks and what they do, or what she hears before actually meeting them properly, and this can shock the reader because it teaches us that we shouldn’t be prejudiced towards people. This also gives the reader an insight of what the war was like for most people, especially women, wondering whether their true love, or family members were ever coming back, and tearing themselves apart if they didn’t come back. This really gives you an insight to heartbreak and destruction within people’s lives, yet shows us that people can find love even in the most disastrous of places, or situations.

*Quotes*

‘Up in the sky where lovers’ darts do toss and turn,
I see our love writ clearly in the distant blue
It says, my dearest precious own sweet one,
There lies the story of dear me and fondest you’

‘If that’s what love does to you, I’d rather not have anyone fall in love with me…not that anyone would…’

*Conclusion*

Overall, I really recommend this book to mainly the female population, as there are more chick flick chapters and girly problems than things that men might not be able to relate to. I wouldn’t however recommend it to young reader’s, as some of the language is hard to understand, and the fact that there is some sexual language, and occasional swearing within the book. To read this book, I would say that you’d have to be quite a strong reader, into chick flicks, and maybe interested about what life was like in the war, enabling you to relate to the characters and story. I give this a ten out of ten for the whole story as I thought it was brilliant, and I think that comparing it to Goodnight mister tom, it is a lot better, but if any of you male population out there, enjoyed goodnight mister tom, then I would recommend giving this book a try. This is a brilliant book, and a good loan from the library.

Price and availability: down your library on loan for free, or at Amazon for £4.97 new, or £0.01 used and new. May also be available at all good bookshops such as Ottakers or Waterstones if you ask for the book.

Thanks for reading

Angiexxx copyright 2006

Summary: If you like Romantic novels, then this is a novel for you