Rating: 4/5
Review:
Readable and thoughtful
I enjoyed Staying On – far more that I expected to from the
synopsis, to be honest.
It is the story of
Tony and Laney who have been living as ex-pats in Spain for many many
years, where they own and run a pub. Tony is now seventy and as both
age and Brexit take their toll, very few of his ex-pat friends remain
and the pub is struggling. Tony wants to return to the Yorkshire of
his youth while Laney refuses to set foot in England again. As their
son, his wife and their 3-year-old son come out to stay after many
years, old tragedies and guilts which have lain beneath the surface
emerge and have a profound effect.
Frankly, it sounds
rather familiar and not really like my kind of thing. However, C.M.
Taylor writes very well, he creates convincing characters and
structures the story very nicely, so that within a readable and
engaging story, the book makes important points about families, the
meaning of home, friendship, class and other things. I found it
touching rather than profoundly moving, but that’s fine with me. I
thought it was an unsentimental but compassionate view of a somewhat
insular community of Brits abroad and Tony made a very recognisably
human protagonist.
I liked the note in
the acknowledgements: “I was told by men with expensive educations
that people don’t want to read about the working classes. I’d
like to thank those men for the motivation.” For me, Taylor has
proved them wrong with this book and I can recommend it.
(My thanks to
Prelude for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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