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Barbara Gamble’s is a 235-page account from a teenage trouble-maker and an out-going elderly woman on life in a seaside tourist spot.
Grace Hopkins has welcomed widowhood. The death of her demented husband has concluded the many hours spent locked in cupboards, the many threats of death he gave her, the many trips he took to his mistress, and the many claims he was one of the more modest World War II veterans. Yet her caring daughter does not understand, but a teenage boy does. A boy who will protect her from the fates of her daughter’s granny flat.
The same teenage boy was sent to a Youth Centre on her evidence of an attack of an elderly man. A boy who likes only to swim, to gamble, and to cause people serious physical and emotional injury. He despises all, has no hope in life, and finds the slaughter of dogs a somewhat humorous sight. Yet he relates to an elderly lady who feeds mice and ignores holes in the roof in his love of the sea.
The book is set on a British coastline where life is boring, the young act in lust and the elderly lose faith. Friends turned foes, death was sniggered at and nobody could really trust anyone.
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