3 days ago
Our Song by Anna Carey: A romantic and heart-warming love story
Our Song
Author
:
Anna Carey
ISBN-13
:
978-1399742382
Publisher
:
Hachette Books Ireland
Guideline Price
:
£15.99
In the noughties, the now-defunct school reunion website Friends Reunited was credited with rekindling teenage romances and opening the Pandora's box of wistful memories. (It was simultaneously castigated as a marriage wrecker, but that's another story).
Anna Carey's charming and tender first novel for adults is a clever friends-reunited-type story, yet the second-chance nostalgia of it is founded on something far more interesting and rewarding than sentimental curiosity.
Laura McDermott gave up her dreams of turning music into a career, because that's what grown-ups do. But Tadhg Hennessy, her old flame and former college bandmate, didn't. Fifteen-odd years later, she is working at an ad agency and he has become a wealthy, stadium-playing star, adored for his heartfelt love songs and 'sweet but spiky guitar pop'.
[
Anna Carey: I needed to remember what it felt like to make stupid romantic choices. So I unearthed my teenage diaries
]
Laura's fiance, Dave, believes being in a college band is like playing five-a-side football: 'You do it for fun, but you know you're never going to play for Real Madrid.' Yet, once you've imagined yourself on the pitch at the Bernabéu or on stage at Glastonbury, a fragment of the dream lingers, even if – as in Laura's case – you don't consciously realise it.
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Just as Laura is blindsided by being made redundant not long after breaking up with Dave and moving out of their shared flat, she gets an unexpected email: Tadhg wants to discuss a song they wrote together years earlier. When they meet, it soon becomes clear that an incomplete song is the least of their unfinished business.
The romantic and heart-warming love story that follows is given added depth by Carey's nuanced exploration of creative endeavour, and how the joy and exhilaration of creativity can become dulled by the demands of life – or slip away entirely.
The reader meets Laura at many ages, from her school days in 1999 through to 2019, and one of this book's many pleasures is how authentically she matures from shy teenager to warm, witty adult. Carey's pop-culture references are spot-on, and the writing is shot through with self-deprecating humour and honesty.
When 17-year-old Laura first meets Tadhg, she reflects on how lovely it is to have a proper crush, because 'it adds a pinch of glitter to everyday life'. The same goes for Our Song.
