The tea house on Mulberry Street by Sharon Owens
Oh, the bliss - a new writer who can write.
This is a cracker. The writer has taken as her starting point a tea house in Belfast, Northern Ireland and has written a series of short stories about its owners and customers, which flows brilliantly to become one of the most compulsive books in a long time.
Each person or couple has a new chapter every time they enter the narrative, but the flow from one chapter to the next is unbroken.
Excellent idea, superbly handled.
The characters are so well written, they are totally believable. The plot is ingenious and is so well carried along by the interaction of the characters. The whole thing is set in Belfast. The "troubles" are mentioned only peripherally, but loom large in the background. Urban decay, marriage breakdown - this book has it all
On the back cover the writer is compared to Maeve Binchy and Joanna Trollope - leaves them for dead!
An unbelievably good first novel. More please.
Reviewer: Kathryn Edwards
5 March 2008
