Review:
Piccadilly, 2008.
This novel by Kate Le Vann is set in London over a summer holiday when 16 year old Rain goes to stay with her trendy young grandmother in the house in which her deceased mother grew up. Here she uncovers her mother's diaries, written when she was the same age as Rain, and believes she has discovered that her mother had an affair with an older pop musician and became pregnant before ever meeting the man Rain believes is her real father. Is she his 'love- child' and if so how will Rain deal with that and how will it affect her close relationship with her scientist academic father?
Throughout this crisis in her life she develops an increasingly close relationship with Harry, a student who has been employed to help her grandmother sort out her house in Notting Hill before selling it. He helps Rain in her quest to uncover the truth but jealousy rears its head as she assumes Harry and a fellow student have a close relationship already and that her growing feelings for him are misled.
Switching between emails, the personal diaries of Rain and those of her mother, written 20 years before, as well as the narrator's voice makes for a slightly difficult tone but I was gripped and had to read on and find out if true love triumphs in the end. This is a sensitive, perceptive and complex exploration of the nature of love explored via the intense feelings of a 16 year old girl discovering her independence for the first time in a new environment.
Laura Taylor
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Rain by Kate Le Vann
Piccadilly, 2008.This novel by Kate Le Vann is set in London over a summer holiday when 16 year old Rain goes to stay with her trendy young grandmother in the house in which her deceased mother grew up. Here she uncovers her mother's diaries, written when she was the same age as Rain, and believes she has discovered that her mother had an affair with an older pop musician and became pregnant before ever meeting the man Rain believes is her real father. Is she his 'love- child' and if so how will Rain deal with that and how will it affect her close relationship with her scientist academic father?
Throughout this crisis in her life she develops an increasingly close relationship with Harry, a student who has been employed to help her grandmother sort out her house in Notting Hill before selling it. He helps Rain in her quest to uncover the truth but jealousy rears its head as she assumes Harry and a fellow student have a close relationship already and that her growing feelings for him are misled.
Switching between emails, the personal diaries of Rain and those of her mother, written 20 years before, as well as the narrator's voice makes for a slightly difficult tone but I was gripped and had to read on and find out if true love triumphs in the end. This is a sensitive, perceptive and complex exploration of the nature of love explored via the intense feelings of a 16 year old girl discovering her independence for the first time in a new environment.
Laura Taylor
Home
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