Rating: 4/5
449 pages
Piatkus; 2014
1963. The year the Beatles first top the charts. The year Martin Luther King has a dream. The year Truman Bird moves his family from their home in Brighton to a dilapidated caravan in the Ashdown Forest – then disappears.
Truman’s a charmer, a chancer, a liar. He’s always got away with it, too. But now he’s gone a dangerous step too far and only has one day to put things right – before he loses everything.
For Truman’s wife, Christie, life has not turned out the way she’d imagined. How has she, that young girl of not that many years ago, ended up like this? In a caravan. With three children. And an absent husband.
We came across this in a bookstore clearing bin. The title and the cover’s sheer nostaligic vibe caught our attention and we snatched it up.
Mark Haysom sets you up to be invested in the novel’s five main characters: Truman Bird, his wife Christie, their son Baxter, Soldier, a homeless person who lives in the woods, and Strachan, who was hired to get back the money Truman owes Mr. Smith.
Set over the course of 24 hours, the story is a great example of a ‘day in the life’ narrative that manages to weave each character’s experiences and perspective in a complex yet sympathetic way, proving that Mark is a master at creating complex, relatable characters.
Whether you’re a child of the 60s or want to dive into an era before smartphones then Love, Love Me Do is a great read that might cause you to go through quite a few emotions – some surprising – with each turn of the page.
