This is a tear-jerking tale of a dead 42 year old coming back to look after herself from birth to death. It's dark and yet lightly told and clever and it comes with top marks from us.
Lovereading comment:
Based on an imaginative and ambitious core idea, the question that has to be asked is does this book deliver in terms of narrative and characterisation? Does it go anywhere? Does it arrest you? The answer is that if you are able to go along with the fantasy, then this is a fulfilling read. If you find the fantasy a stretch, then so might be this book. But it is worth a try.
This is the first novel by an intelligent and skillful writer from whom we cannot help feel that there are more good things to come.
Note - there is the interesting inclusion of 'Reading Group Discussion Points' at the end. Plus an author Q&A, in which she admits to being inspired, among others, by Rachmaninov, Bjork and Coldplay.
If this book is Bjork, we await Rachmaninov with interest!
When Margot Delacroix dies at forty-two years old, she is sent back to earth as a guardian angel - to herself. Renamed Ruth, she is forced by divine mandate to re-experience and record her biggest mistakes and fiercest regrets from the beginning of her life to her untimely death. Forced from the moment of her birth to witness the cogs of fate and the stuttering engine of free will, Ruth sets out to change the course of her life, and, ultimately, to prevent her premature death. When she realises that the reasons behind her teenage son's descent into drugs and murder lay within her own actions as Margot, she makes a pact with a demon - she will give up her place in Heaven in exchange for the opportunity to save her son from his fate. But the changes she makes result in consequences no one could expect...
Following a PhD at Queen's University, Carolyn Jess-Cooke took up a lectureship in Film Studies at the University of Sunderland. She has published non-fiction books in Film Studies and Shakespeare and is the author of the multi award-winning collection of poetry INROADS.
