The Bluebird Cafe

Synopsis: John Vir owns a newsagent in Southampton - the only shop that still stocks packets of petrified celery soup, drosophila-studded fruit and boxes of henna. Lucy and Paul are his favourite customers - they live across the road above Snooke's Electrical Stores, soon to become the Bluebird Cafe. Stencilling blue doves below the picture rails and buying stripped-pine chairs from the Oxfam furniture store Lucy works in the newly opened cafe whilst Paul spends his time at the Badger Centre as a volunteer. Meanwhile John Vir thinks of little else but Lucy and invites her to the cash 'n' carry, hoping of course, that it will be a prelude to something more exciting, for them both.

Review: This was a bright, breezy and quick read (just like this review hopefully) about Lucy and Paul. Lucy owns and runs the Bluebird Cafe (not very successfully it has to be said .. the place is vegetarian and more often than not empty) and Paul is mad about wildlife and conservation. It's quite funny, especially the secondary characters like Mr Vir who runs the corner shop, he's infatuated with Lucy and schemes to get rid of Paul with poisoned samosa's, slow witted Gilbert who is the cafe's most regular customer (but somehow they never have the heart to charge him for his food) and his girlfriend (who's name quite escapes me) who's the sort of person who always sit's next to me on the bus (i.e. nutter) .. I loved her, she wears loud, unmatching, cast off clothes and doesn't understand the concept of personal space. Lucy and Paul are nice, but that's it .. they're just nice, I'm not sure I cared enough about them. It's not rubbish, it made me smile a lot, I didn't want to abandon it .. I just didn't get swept away by it . Rebecca is a distant relation of Jane Austen which was the thing I was most excited about.