Teenage kicks stir my emotions
& give me some vivid dreams to boot.

Thursday 27th March 2014



Reading has always been one of the things that gives me pleasure in life, stretching my imagination and allowing me to escape from my reality for a little while. Having a 12 year old and two under fives to take care of I haven't had time to do any reading for the last couple of years now although my book shelves are still filling up in anticipation of the time when I do. Reading had always been a big part of my leisure time but these days my only regular fix is the nightly bedtime story with my kids!

A review of Goose, a novel by Dawn O'Porter.

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to be chosen via Twitter to be sent a pre-release copy of Dawn O'Porter's Goose. I've always enjoyed Dawn's TV programmes - her subjects are interesting and her presenting style is quirky, endearingly naive but utterly sympathetic – so I had hoped that her writing would show the same flare. When she re-tweeted her publisher, Hot Key Books, putting out a request for bloggers to review her second novel I practically threw my hand up in the air and shouted “Me! Me! Me! Please sir, pick me!” and it worked. A few days later a copy landed on my doormat, hot off the press.



Now they say don't judge a book by its cover but they (whoever that is) also say first impressions count so I will just remark that the fluorescent orange and decapitated figures on the front made me a little trepidatious about the standard of the contents. Was this going to be a throw-away novel, the sort you get free with a magazine, after all they had given it away to me? The look very much reminded me of books I read in my teens back in the 1990s but I'm a little older and wiser now and I like to think my taste has matured requiring a little more meat on the bones of my literature to keep me satisfied. How would the contents shape up?

The follow up story to her début Paper Aeroplanes, which I haven't read, I thought that maybe it would take me a little while to connect with the two protagonists, Renée and Flo, but I was wrong and instantly sympathised with both girls despite their differences and seemingly opposing personalities. There was something about each of them that resonated with my younger self; Renée brimming with confidence and Flo full of self-doubt. The story is told by alternately flipping between the perspectives of the two best friends as they are going through the final few months of sixth form, nearing the point of getting their A-levels and reaching the time when they can ultimately free themselves from what they believe to be the confines of their small world, the island of Guernsey.

Throughout Renée and Flo struggle to discover who they are as individuals and establish who they want to be, having the power to decide to act how they choose but also being subject to the behaviour of others and suffering from the implications of the past. Their friendship passes through the motions of drifting together and apart, often complicated by their interactions with the other people they encounter and their clashing needs and perspectives on the world they find themselves in. Its a subject that will be quite familiar to any teenager nearing the point of escape from the last confines of adolescence and also to those of us who have passed beyond that point only to emerge in the unexpected shackles of adulthood.

Dawn writes just as enthralling as I had hoped, totally captivating my imagination and throwing me back into the world of a teenager in the '90s that I once inhabited with perfectly placed cultural references. Reading mostly before bed I have had some of the most vivid flashback dreams and suffered both the pangs of longing to be young again and the sheer relief that time is over! Goose has had me laughing out loud (waking my husband up wondering what the hell I was reading about) and sobbing away as I empathised with the girls on a level I had never expected but am delighted to have experienced.

Dawn O'Porter's writing reminds of my favourite teenage author Judy Blume and the pleasure I got from reading her novel Forever at a time when I thought nobody understood how I felt. Goose is an honest and non-patronising account of the thoughts and strong emotions that drive teenage femininity when it is on the cusp of adult independence and I would thoroughly recommend it. My only criticism is that I wished it was longer, as it was so entertaining I was sad to reach the end, but now I shall just have to back-step and read Paper Aeroplanes whilst awaiting the next title in the series.

Dawn O'Porter's Goose is published by Hot Key Books and will be available to buy on 3rd April 2014 priced at £7.99

You can follow both Dawn and Hot Key Books on Twitter:
Dawn is @hotpatooties
Her publisher is @HotKeyBooks