Confessions of a forty something f##k up by Alexandra Potter

I don’t usually ‘do’ chic lit and there is nothing about this book at first glance that would make you think it was anything else.  Sometimes though, there is something that makes me choose a book that is outside of my comfort zone.  This time it was because Sally Phillips was reading it on audible and I love her as a comedian (Green Wing and Smack the Pony are two of my favourites).

The book itself starts off slowly and I struggled to get past the thought that it was trying too hard to be a new ‘Bridget Jones’.  I think if I had been reading a physical book I would have put it down and not picked it up again.  Fortunately I was listening in the car on my hour long drive to work so I left it playing.  The story opens in the aftermath of a breakup and I struggled to have any empathy with the protagonist, Nell, and her continuous ‘woe is me’ attitude.  I think, perhaps, the author was trying to portray the devastation that had become the characters' life post relationship but it was superficial at best.

By the time I was on my return journey the story pace and depth was slowly improving.  Nell had returned to England from America after her breakup and failure of the buisness, she was in debt and heartbroken with no idea on what to do next, her intial thought is that she will end up in her childhood bedroom figuring her life out (she didn't know that her parents were using it as an air B&B).  The book follows her first year home chronicalling how she pieces her life back together, written from her point of view.  The Bridget Jones link in my mind was the diary format with 'Things I am grateful for' each day as she is trying out a gratitude journal.

I began to find myself empathising with Nell, her honesty the similarities between her and my life and wanting to find out how she would navigate whatever came next.  This style of empathy and comparison from an author always makes a book more engaging for me.  I also find it more submersing when ends to events in a book are not long and drawn out but seem to flow more in real time and this author manages this very well.

Meeting and befriending Cricket was a master stroke.  I love the 80 something Cricket as a character and she is outside of Nell’s long term friendship group where everyone is presented in the same way and kind of blend into one person, I believe purposefully as much later on we get to know them better.  Edward, Nell’s landlord is the other character that builds empathy from the reader and, although in a more superficial way, I bonded with him as I did Cricket.  I invested in wanting to know what was going to happen to all three of them.  

There’s no real twist to the story or anything particularly unexpected, except for perhaps an elbow in the ribs on sports day, but I found myself looking forward to the next instalment on my journeys to work.  There was fun, sadness and cringe moments all of which took me gently along with the story.

As the book was reaching the final quarter a bit more depth and separation happened with the friendship group, I believe on purpose by the author, I started to remember who was who, they became differentiated with different lives and issues.  This of course, led to a bit of investment from the reader as to how their lives turned out.  At the end of the book, things are tidy, which I like, characters have become friends of the reader, Edward, Cricket and Nell have been followed and there is a gentle conclusion to the story.

Overall I enjoyed reading/listening to this, it was a good car journey entertainer and I would recommend it as a fun story that flows and is not exhausting to read.  It was well written and welcoming.