| Product: |
Love Is A Four Letter Word - Claire Calman |
| Date: |
22/06/08 (220 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Keeps you interested
Disadvantages: None
Bella Kreuzer is still single, following the death of her boyfriend Patrick over a year ago. However she doesn't want to fall in love again. She moves house into another town and another job in order to escape memories, and certainly isn't looking for love. She gets a job as a graphics designer for selling things, although her passion for art comes through when she hires a garden designer for her new house, who nags her to contact some galleries for her work.
This novel follows the life of Bella, written from her point of view as she moves house and job to escape her old life. Her house is not sorted for a long time meaning she still has a lot of clutter around, and she talks about how she wants to pack up love into the clutter she brought with her. However fate (if you believe in it!) has very different ideas for her!
The story never drags on, and it constantly delves into the memories into Bellas past, not only from before her boyfriend dies, but also her childhood when current events trigger something. However this sometimes gets confusing because you don't really have any indication how far memories with her previous boyfriend go, because it doesn't give you any events to sort of create a timescale with. Although it's not relevant to events in the story...
Bella is stubborn, but you can see she clearly gets that from her mother. This is apparent from conflicts in the book which eventually resolve. She is helped out by her friend Viv and her husband Nick who are the only people she knows before she moves to her new town and starts her job, and then she meets Seline who hires her and becomes quite friendly with, however she doesn't really feature in the story that much until later on. There weren't really any characters that annoyed me as quite often happens, even though her stubborn-ness is very apparent in parts.
This book kept me interested until the end, although it wasn't really one that I can't put down. I got this for a bargain 99p from Oxfam, however amazon are selling it at the moment for £5.59 which is definately worth it in my opinion.
This novel is the first from Claire Calman, although she is also a poet and lots of other things, and has performed her poetry on radio.
"A warm and funny first novel" - The Times
"Funny, clever and moving" - Sunday Mirror
"A witty wistful tale" - Elle
Published by Black Swan
Summary: Definately worth it
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