The Four Streets: Volume 1

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The country had picked itself up from the ravages of war and had completed the process of dusting itself down.

She was the person everyone went to for help and advice, and her home was where the women often gathered to discuss the latest gossip. He regularly sought refuge in the outhouse, one of the few places where no one troubled him, and took his newspaper for company. Before I had read very much I knew I would want to finish it, which to me is the acid test of a novel.It was in so doing that I came across a large number of 5* review ratings and had started to question my judgement.

This is the first and introductory book in this trilogy, and is well written and believable ( I grew up in the Liverpool area during this time post war period, and felt instantly ''at home'' when reading all three of these books ). I listened to it over a 24 hour period, every chance I could, I couldn't leave it alone, I will have to not listen for a while so I hopefully forget some of the story first, it was really vivid and very well read.

The book to me was less about the plot which was really there to allow the reader to see how the community responded and reacted to the challenges Nadine Dorries threw at it. However, despite what I thought was going to be a nice hearty read on community turned into something much, much darker to the point I actually found a few scenes to be very graphic and very disturbing . Nadine Dorries has a way of vividly describing everything so you can picture what everything looks like so easily. On almost every window in every house hung a set of net curtains, each with a lace pattern different from any other window in the street.

There are some quite dark parts to this story, but they are not sensationalised and help paint a picture of a hard life. It's not hard to find fault with a first novel: I thought a couple of Ms Dorries' plot devices were a touch simplistic and her characters sometimes go from elation to gloom and despondency without much in between. An exception is the thriller, in which the plot is all and it does not matter so much whether the characters are believable, which is why politicians are generally less bad at writing thrillers .My books are based on the streets of Liverpool, or in the Liverpool hospitals where I trained as a nurse, or at one of my favourite places in the world, the west coast of Ireland. And how the Employees keep them with just enough money to survive from one pay to the next intentionally. This is not intended to be a full statement of all your rights under the Distance Selling Regulations. Quotes such as “unable to put down”, “brilliant from start to finish”, “if this isn’t a best seller I’ll eat my hat” and “riveting read” to name but a few.

But happily, Dorries generally restricts herself to telling rather than showing what her characters are thinking and doing, so we are spared too much of the shamrockese.But then that's followed by a mention of the child being in nappies to jumping to mentions of school. Peggy Nolan, with seven boys and a husband too lazy to work, has hit rock bottom and is hiding a terrible secret. Jerry and Bernadette are determined to better themselves for the sake of their children - except that the plan goes wrong and Jerry is left alone to bring up their daughter.