Book info

• Title Camberwell Beauty
• Author Jenny Eclair
• Year 2000
• Genre Contemporary

Welcome to one of the nicest streets in one of London's vilest boroughs: a determined middle-class oasis of skips and bay trees, where Volvos sniff each others' bumpers and men called Giles live with women called Samantha. This is a satellite-dish-free zone of tall houses, standing shoulder to shoulder with big front doors, five floors apiece. Come inside, shut the door and smell the coffee: you could almost be in Kensington. This is where the actors, writers and media types live, where small children wearing smart uniforms and shoes in the shape of lightbulbs get ferried every day to schools that are not local. Some people are luckier than others; fortune smiles on some and gobs on the rest. Jo Metcalf (no. 95) smokes and spies on the smug Cunninghams down the street as they play their bile-inducing game of happy families. Why is the grass greener on the other side of the fence? But happiness is a fragile thing and hairline cracks in a perfect world can become craters of misery...

Thoughts

I love Jenny Eclair’s writing and this book has some great scenes, wonderful turns of phrase, and great characterisation… particularly because most of the people in the book aren’t particularly sympathetic and often awful to each other. But you still are hooked on finding out what happened and what’s going to happen next. From that point of view, I loved it, but I have to admit, after the event where our two timelines converge and then towards the abrupt ending, I just felt like there wasn’t a clear ending. I’m not saying everything has to be wrapped up in a neat bow, it couldn’t be for these characters, but it just felt left, dangling, and unsatisfying. Still worth reading, for sure, but I wish it could have had just a bit more of a conclusion.

Rating: 3 / 5