Cocktails for Three - Madeleine Wickham
Sophie Kinsella was a very important writer to me. She was one of the first grown up writers I read whose books I really enjoyed. I’ve never gone many months without reading them. At the most struggly times, when I couldn’t read anything else, I could always read a Sophie Kinsella book. No matter how sad or anxious I feel, they help. I’m currently re-reading the Shopaholic books in her memory.
The slightly different slant on the books she wrote as Madeleine Wickham meant that I found them harder to access as a young adult and then, once I was old enough for them, I’d stopped reading that genre very much. They’re older and the society they’re set in is different. They’re more bourgeois, the characters are older and sadder, the world is deeper and less hopeful. They’re also written in third person and, while I usually prefer that to first, she found very vital first person voices in her Sophie Kinsella books.
But in the pub on my own one day, I decided to give one a go for the first time since I was a teenager and I really enjoyed it. I wasn’t sad in the pub by any means - I had chips and wine and I was waiting to go to a recording I was excited for - but the tone of it matched my early-thirties energy the same way Becky Bloomwood matched my eighteen-year-old self. I think it was called The Gatecrasher.
I then didn’t read another one.
But I must have looked at or begun this one because it was halfway down my currently reading list. So in memory of Madeleine Wickham, I am going to kick off my “currently reading challenge” with this.
Three friends in their early thirties on three different lifestyle paths. One is about to become a mother. One is six years into an affair with a married man. One is wracked with guilt from her late father’s behaviour.
Things I believe to be signs of the 90s:
A pregnant woman having wine with lunch on a working day. I do not believe it is any of my business whether pregnant women choose to abstain from alcohol during pregnancy, but I don’t know anyone who has wine with lunch on a working day (as far as I know).
Affordability of Angel for a young professional
