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Customer Reviews
Although the characters are larger than life and the circumstances comic, at the heart of this novel is a real sense of growing up in an atmosphere of loss and fear. Time and again the reader is catapulted out of dark humour into scenes of simple pain beautifully drawn. It works on every level: mystery story, coming-of-age story and character-driven novel. Rainy Day Women is splendid.
Meanwhile at home the house and family are falling apart. Jo's parents only appear in flashbacks, alcoholic father and workaholic mother, their absence is the heartbreak at the cold centre of the story. The Red House is described as an oddity built by an 18th century madman to irritate his wife, and it is as much a character in the book as Jo, Francine and Jo's 3 weird brothers and intolerable bossy sister-in-law. Not to mention deliciously revolting toddler nephew Angus and a cat called Elvis. It is ALSO a murder mystery, but not so much whodunnit as who done what? Maybe the house is actually haunted. Jo's batty brother Tarquin seems to think so, but he would do, wouldn't he? And why has the folk singer moved in with Tarquin anyway? There is even a code to be cracked, which might or might not have been given to Jo by the poltergeist, if he exists (if he does exist, he's apparently named Clarence).
Amazingly, all this comes together, it all makes sense, it all resolves for better or worse, the ending is really satisfying and a tricky little twist just when you think it's over. Rainy Day Women is a page turner at times blackly comic and also disturbing story. The portrayal of a teenaged girl bringing herself up in this desperately dysfunctional family is achingly good. And it's full of the music of the time, the good, the bad, and the cacophonous.
The main character, Jo Starkey, is 15 and she has a disastrous family life in a house which is tumbling down. It also seems to be infected by a poltergeist. Her parents are never home (her mother's a doctor and her father's a drunk) her twin brother is an obsessive maths swat, one older brother is a prog-rock genius with an autistic streak and her oldest brother is a bumbling klutz hen-pecked by his wife, while the wife strips Jo's house of its valuables. Oddly, nearly all of them are completely lovable characters (the parents aren't, but the parents are only seen in flash-backs), and even the hen-pecking wife has her saving graces as the story goes on.
The plot has Jo and her best friend trying to figure out the "supernatural" goings on in the house. This involves befriending the "poltergeist" and cracking a coded message. The rest of their free time is spent in pubs and folk clubs, where both girls fall for a ruthless and goodlooking singer named Florian who uses them as a stepping stone to meet the rock star brother. Florian also thinks the house is a masterpiece of strange beauty, even when the staircase collapses and unexplained noises are forever groaning out of the beams.
It all sounds weird, but you get completely drawn in because Jo is such a believable character. The book is written in the 1st person (a main difference to "A Saucerful of Secrets") and her teenage obsessions and blind spots are universals. Setting them against this bleak background makes them even more poignant. The plot keeps you guessing and the jokes are absolute crackers. I recommend this book to any reader, either gender, any age. It will hang around in your head long after you've put it down.
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