By Mike Gayle

This looks like chick-lit. I mean, consider that this was the first sight I had of it:

So there was no reason in the world for me to look at it, right? Yet I read the thing in two days …

Let me save face a little, first. There’s a bookshelf in one of the kitchens at work. The kitchen is next to the toilet. I am a bloke, so needed to arm myself with something to read whilst going about my business.

I’ve noticed that someone is bringing in undamaged books and leaving them on the bookshelf. I helped myself to one the other day, since it’s one in a series that I have started collecting.

Anyway, when I went in on Sunday, I thought I’d see what was new. There was this book called “Turning Thirty” and, well, I’m turning thirty, so I picked it up, anticipating that I would need it for all of twenty seconds.

Well, the first chapter flew by. And why wouldn’t it, at a mere seven pages? And the funny thing is that that ranks as one of the longest chapters in the book! The 350 pages are spread over one hundred chapters, as unbelievable as that sounds.

The premise is straightforward: Matt Beckford is 29, a Brummie living in New York with his 24-year-old girlfriend, Elaine. All of a sudden, they have the world’s most amicable break-up, since they both happened to have reached the conclusion at the same time that they weren’t actually in love.

Matt decides that he wants to leave New York and transfers to the Australian office. The only thing is that it’s three months away, so he decides to return home to King’s Heath, Birmingham in the interim.

The book charts those three months, as he moves back in with his parents and gets into touch with his old friends.

Each of the characters is sufficiently well designed as to stick out in the mind’s eye, not necessitating taking a moment to think “Which one’s Katrina again?”, and that’s a compliment to the author.

This was something of a little gem I chanced upon. It’s not mind-blowing, but it was a very straightforward read that kept me glued. This is particularly surprising because I’ve tried reading two of my usual type of books today and not been able to get more than a couple of pages into them, so the readability scores highly, even if I found myself reading with a veneer of condescension, telling myself that I’m not supposed to be able to read something like this.

It also proved interesting. It doesn’t happen so often anymore, but it’s true that spending time with your childhood friends is liberating. They don’t just nod politely when you ask “Hey, do you remember when … ?” Funnily enough, I visited an old friend of mine (hadn’t seen her since August) on my second day of reading this and that’s exactly what happened. We’re speaking about having a reunion with another close friend soon, and then the anecdotes really will fly. Well, we’re turning thirty; that’s the way to greet it

Tags: Mike Gayle

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