“Joyce’s characters are so charmingly eccentric that they could have leapt straight from the pages of a Dickens novel. Enid is a comedic masterpiece, effervescent and brimming with life. This exhilarating story will scoop you up and carry you along to a dizzying crescendo. But it is also a story of an unlikely friendship and of women who refuse to be defined by the labels cast upon them in drab 1950s Britain. Funny, wise, and utterly life-affirming.”
NO MAJOR SPOILERS
Just finished Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce. Ms. Joyce seems to have the knack for writing very interesting and different stories and she has done it again with this terrific book about two woman who go out for the adventure of their lives, leaving chaos and wonderment in their wake.
It is 1950 in London and Margaret Benson is out of work, all alone with only her interest in Beetles, an interest she inherited from her father, to keep her going. Now she decides to,abandon everything and head to New Caledonia to find a Beetle that may not even exist. She advertises in the paper for help and along comes Miss Enid Pretty to be her assistant.
Miss Pretty is definitely not the average science enthusiast, in fact she knows and cares little about it. But she does need to get out of town, so at the last minute she joins with Miss Benson and off they go on-their adventure.
What we will have here is a story of two totally different woman in every shape and form and how they will be bound together in ways neither could ever imagine.
Inventive, funny, a book that will be hard to put down, their adventures will constantly leave you wondering, what could happen next.
Highly recommended
Reviewed by:
Richard Franco
Added 18th December 2020
