Sparkles (Louise Bagshawe)****

I’ve always admired Louise Bagshawe’s writing style but haven’t particularly enjoyed her books so I was thrilled to find Sparkles. In some ways, it has a lot of similarities with the other Louise Bagshawe books I’ve read. Like Lucy in Tuesday’s Child, Sophie has to learn to be a lady (although we only really see her nonladylike self in flashbacks) and like Lita and Becky in When She was Bad, Sophie finds herself in charge of a business. She’s never done anything like it before but she discovers she has a real knack for it.

But in this book, everything really works. Bagshawe has created a fascinating and exciting multi-layered story, full of twists and turns you almost never see coming. Her characters are also great. Sophie at first seems a bit distant and too concerned with keeping up her aristocratic appearance but the more you read, the more you get to know the vulnerable and sexy woman inside.

Also with a big part to play in the book is Sophie’s son Tom, who is spending his university days shagging and failing his classes (so in other words he’s a completely normal student). But when he fears for the safety of his inheritance he decides to come home and take charge. In the process, he meets Judy, once Sophie’s husband’s secret (at least as far as Sophie was concerned) lover, who is now showing an interest in Tom.

Judy is a complete bitch who likes to tell herself she only cares about being rich but it’s very difficult to hate her. No matter what she does, it’s difficult not to sympathise with her and also to admire her determination and inventiveness. And I smiled more than once when she found herself accidentally being really nice to Sophie. Judy is a great villain because you want her plans to be thwarted but you do kind of want her to end up as happy as she can be without making the other characters suffer.

At the beginning of the book, all Hugh really wants is to buy Sophie’s business but he too turns out to be someone completely different from what I was expecting. He has a business of his own and he always works really hard at it but gradually he realises there are more important things in life.

Then there are scenes featuring the mysterious and murderous Vladek, who is in some way connected to the stories in ways we can partly guess – although you don’t realise the full extent of this until the end of the book. At one point he changes his name to Yuri and this is how his girlfriend refers to him but my friend told me that calling someone Yuri is like calling someone by their first name and surname in English so Yuri’s lover should really call him Yura. But maybe I misunderstood and in any case, Vladek/Yuri is a bit weird so maybe Bagshawe was being really clever and making him get it wrong on purpose.

This is a wonderfully written book, with beautiful, evocative descriptions and exciting dialogue. Maybe it’s not a book I’ll read again but it’s a book I’ll remember – and maybe that’s more important.

When She was Bad (Louise Bagshawe)***

There’s no doubt that Louise Bagshawe can write. She writes extremely well. Her descriptions are detailed and vivid. I often have trouble ‘seeing’ what writers are describing but it was easy to picture what Bagshawe had in mind, even though she was writing about places I knew nothing about, including some she could have invented for all I know.

Her characters are interesting, her dialogue is witty and you’re never going to get them confused. It’s mostly a serious book but it’s certainly not without humour. When Lita, her main character, goes to work for an advertising firm, Bagshawe describes advertising campaigns that are good or bad, successful and unsuccessful. And she does it convincingly. Her advertising campaigns actually sound like advertising campaigns. When Lita has an idea that is hailed as brilliant by the other characters, I’ve already decided for myself that it’s a great idea. (Okay I have no interest in buying the products but that’s probably more to do with me than the writing.) The plot at times seemed more like a series of episodes but there were plotlines that went all the way through the book and at times it really was enthralling.

So why didn’t I like the book?

The main problem was that I didn’t like the characters. Lita, a Bronx girl who becomes a famous model and then a top advertiser, is cold, hard and on some occasions just nasty. Bagshawe tries to give the impression that she needs to be nasty in order to survive and maybe there’s some truth in that but it never really feels as though Lita is putting on an act.

Also, everything comes to her too easily. Yes, she works her butt off and she is clearly (and believably) intelligent. But it’s not always easy to sympathise with successful characters. From a very early stage in the book I realised that whatever happened, Lita was going to land on her feet, probably within the next few pages. Not only that, she was going to end up somewhere even better than where she was before. So I very quickly stopped worrying about her.

There is another important main character called Becky. She doesn’t appear in about the first third of the book but from that point on maybe just under half the book is from her point of view, half is from Lita’s and there’s a little bit from various other characters. I did like Becky at first. I did feel some sympathy for her when she arrived at the English house she inherited, only to be made to feel very unwelcome by the snobby relatives living in the house at the moment. But then later Becky becomes unrealistically intelligent and competent, full of ideas about things she didn’t have a clue about before. So in the end she’s just a slightly warmer version of Lita.

Their relationships are also rather unconvincing. There’s a total twat called Rupert who dupes Lita and nearly manages to dupe Becky but it just didn’t ring true for me how someone as intelligent as Lita was so completely taken in. Then Lita meets a couple of other men, neither of whom I liked, before finding one who just happened to be right for her. Not that he ever seemed right for her but he was an improvement on the others.

The relationship between Becky and the guy she likes is great at first. I loved the way they disliked each other on sight, yet it was clear they really fancy each other. Then there are lots of arguments and misunderstandings and very occasionally a very short amount of time (maybe two seconds) when they’re actually enjoying each other’s company. But then it gets a bit unrealistic and it’s never really resolved between them.

Another thing I didn't notice myself but which seems worth mentioning is that the book is full of errors (click the title of the review and it should take you to the Amazon reviews). Lita ages five years in the time it takes Becky to age one year. There are references to a song and to linguistic phrases that weren't around at the time when the book is set. I don't know for sure whether this is true as I'd have to read the book again and I don't want to do that but I thought it was worth mentioning. And well done to the reviewers for paying enough attention to the book to spot things like this.

I have another Louise Bagshawe book on my shelf waiting to be read – and I will read it. But to be honest, the thing that interests me most is whether it has a character called Victoria in. In both of the Bagshawe books I’ve read (the other is Tuesday’s Child), there’s a total bitch called Victoria. They’re not the same person. So what’s she got against Victorias? (Although I can’t think of anyone called Victoria I actually like…)

Tuesday's Child (Louise Bagshawe)**

I have given Tuesday’s Child only two stars because there is a lot that frustrates me about the book. But it does have many strengths, and if you’re a different sort of person from me, the strengths will quite likely not be overridden by all the things I didn’t like. So I’ll tell you now – Louise Bagshawe’s novel has many genuinely funny moments, and some really lovely characters. The central character, Lucy, is very sweet in her naivety, and her best friend Ollie is absolutely gorgeous. Some of the other characters are a bit one-dimensional, but that doesn’t matter in this sort of comedy because part of the point is that they’re so fake, they really would seem one-dimensional if you met them in person. Lucy’s snobby, bitchy workmates are called Jade, Buffy and Melissa – somehow, I can’t imagine a better trio of names. And there’s a wanker called James as well – see Lucy in the Sky, Holly’s Inbox and Watermelon.

Tuesday’s Child is Cinderella. Rags to riches. The ugly duckling who becomes a swan. But, for me, it’s a story that’s unrewarding. It’s all very well for Cinderella to meet her Prince if that’s what she wants. But if all Lucy (yes, she’s another of those stupid Lucys, but not too stupid to know what she wants from life) wants is to write about computer games and play football with the lads, she ought to be able to do that.

Maybe most chick lit readers want to read about typical girls, and require the weird girls to acquire at least an element of typicality in order to be considered a likeable character. If this is true, it’s a shame because there are too many books, magazines and people around already telling you that unless girls look good and dress well and give a shit about what perfume they’re wearing (I don’t think I even own any perfume), they are never going to get anywhere in life. I don’t agree with that attitude at all. I would so much rather read about someone with a bit of originality about them ending up happy.

When Lucy gets a job as a secretary with a group of girls who happen to wear expensive clothes all the time, it’s fair enough for her to wear those clothes at work. She doesn’t have a choice about that. But why should she suddenly start wearing those clothes outside work as well? It’s not even as though her workmates are nice, kind, friendly, interesting people. Lucy has no desire to be like them. She had no desire to dress like them before, so why start now?

Of course, Lucy does eventually realise that her job doesn’t suit her, and she leaves. (I might as well give that part of the plot away as that’s usually what does happen in novels like this.) But we never see her playing football again. And that’s a shame because she is astonishingly good. She can play in a team of guys, and score goals against an all-male opposition. Even if she wasn’t good at it, the point is she loves it. She shouldn’t have to stop playing because it’s not very girly. She should be allowed to be the person she is, and to enjoy being that person.

One of Bagshawe’s reasons for changing Lucy’s personality is because she is, apparently, ‘not very mature’. The proof of this is her decision to review computer games for a living. Well, what’s wrong with that? Someone’s got to do it, and why not her? Computer games are not aimed at people of a particular age. Lucy’s only twenty-four, anyway – not that age matters. I don’t think people should be made to feel that there’s any kind of age limit on the things they enjoy. There will be some exceptions to that: for both practical and legal reasons, a mature male can’t start playing rugby with a group of small boys in the park. But there’s no reason he shouldn’t play with people his own age and own size.

Lucy is eventually permitted to return to her computer games – but she does so in a way that’s mature and worthwhile and helps others. There’s nothing wrong with helping others. On the contrary, I think it’s something everyone should do when they can. But Lucy doesn’t need something like this in order to make playing computer games at her age acceptable. There’s no need at all for Lucy to do anything spectacular or revolutionary.

It alienates us because most of us will never get to do anything like that. Even if we wanted to, the chances are we would never have the opportunity. Also (although maybe I’m wrong about this), I don’t think Lucy’s innovation actually exists in our world – certainly not to the extent the book suggests it does. And if it does, Lucy is more or less being credited with it, which is completely unfair and wrong.

Even if Bagshawe felt very strongly that Lucy did need to use her computer skills in an unselfish and helpful way, it was a mistake to have it happen out of nowhere. The theme needs to be strongly in place from the start. It’s fine for it to be subtle – but, when it happens, we need to be looking back and thinking: Yes, of course. This is exactly the sort of thing Lucy has been looking for all along, and this is exactly what she needs to make her happy, and even though it was a surprise, I can look back on the story and see Bagshawe was leading up to it the whole time.

Instead, I was kind of left thinking… what????