My review of The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne by Freya North

 

When your present meets your past, what do you take with you - and what do you leave behind?**

Eadie Browne is an odd child with unusual parents, living in a strange house neighbouring the local cemetery. Bullied at school - but protected by her two best friends, Celeste and Josh, and her many imaginary friends lying six feet under next door - Eadie muddles her way through.

Arriving in Manchester as a student in the late 1980s, Eadie confronts a busy, gritty Victorian metropolis a far cry from the small Garden City she's left behind. Soon enough she experiences a novel freedom she never imagined and it's seductive. She can be who she wants to be, do as she pleases, and no one back home needs to know. As Manchester embraces the dizzying, colourful euphoria of Rave counterculture, Eadie is swept along, blithely ignoring danger and reality. Until, one night, her past comes hurtling at her with ramifications which will continue into her adult life.

Now, as the new millennium beckons, Eadie is turning thirty with a marriage in tatters. She must travel back to where she once lived for a funeral she can't quite comprehend. As she journeys from the North to the South, from the present to the past, Eadie contemplates all that was then - and all that is now - in this moving love letter to youth.

When your present meets your past, what do HARDCOVER / ISBN-13: 9781802793000

PRICE: £16.99

ON SALE: 1st February 2024 you take with you - and what do you 

Thank you to Welbeck Publishing UK for granting my wish in getting to read Freya North’s latest book. 

I loved this book partly because I could identify with the young girl in the 80’s Eadie was. Eadie wanted her freedom but differently than most teenagers longed for. Be careful what you wish for you just might get it. What Eadie  didn’t count on was what her freedom would cost her. 

Freya North has created a wonderful birth to death telling of, The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne. I for one am happy to have read it.

There are high moments in Eadie’s adulthood and low moments in her life. What I loved about her character was her tenacity and her fragility. She never lost sight of who she was.

Freya’s wonderful book is published now in the United Kingdom and available in all independent bookshops and online retailers. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.