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A review by suebarsby
Greatest Hits by Laura Barnett
5.0
Laura Barnett's The Versions of Us still sits on my TBR pile but I was interested in the idea of her second novel, especially when it was announced that Kathryn Williams would be providing an accompanying soundtrack.
Greatest Hits is the story of Cass Wheeler, a retired folk-pop singer-songwriter from the 1970s who takes a day to listen to her back catalogue and choose 16 songs to represent her life and work. As she does so, the story of her life emerges and we find out more about why each was written and what Cass has gone through to get to where she is, isolated and alone, but about to emerge with an album of new material.
Each chapter starts with a song and charts a part of Cass's life, from her entrance into the world as the daughter of a vicar who christens her Maria because he feels she should, leaving Cassandra as her middle name. Cass's mother has depression and leaves her husband and daughter to run away to Canada when Cass is a young girl. This act changes Cass's life - emotionally in ways she takes years to recover from, and physically as she moves from her devastated father to live with her aunt and uncle. It is there that she takes her first real steps to a musical career.
Told purely from Cass's point of view, the book is nevertheless a clear-eyed account of the mistakes we make as we get through life, and is unskimping on the details - the drug taking, drinking, domestic abuse. This is a novel about consequences, how we live with them, and about the elusive second chance.
Greatest Hits is the story of Cass Wheeler, a retired folk-pop singer-songwriter from the 1970s who takes a day to listen to her back catalogue and choose 16 songs to represent her life and work. As she does so, the story of her life emerges and we find out more about why each was written and what Cass has gone through to get to where she is, isolated and alone, but about to emerge with an album of new material.
Each chapter starts with a song and charts a part of Cass's life, from her entrance into the world as the daughter of a vicar who christens her Maria because he feels she should, leaving Cassandra as her middle name. Cass's mother has depression and leaves her husband and daughter to run away to Canada when Cass is a young girl. This act changes Cass's life - emotionally in ways she takes years to recover from, and physically as she moves from her devastated father to live with her aunt and uncle. It is there that she takes her first real steps to a musical career.
Told purely from Cass's point of view, the book is nevertheless a clear-eyed account of the mistakes we make as we get through life, and is unskimping on the details - the drug taking, drinking, domestic abuse. This is a novel about consequences, how we live with them, and about the elusive second chance.