The Year of the Ladybird

I read this a couple of weeks ago as a random choice of a book by Graham Joyce, who is one of those writers I've bucket listed for years with only a few short stories and 1 Novella (leningrad Nights) read by me before now.

Joyce definitely evokes a sense of timeliness and place very well, in this case a holiday camp in Skegness in the drought summer of 1976 but the characters felt less well-defined and sometimes bordered on caricatures to me- especially the jolly camp comic, Nobby- I could picture the late Syd James playing him quite easily (Incredibly distracting, that was!).

As this is a fantasy novel, I think it's fair to say that I found the fantastical elements a little too underplayed,almost underwhelming, even. Please note for example that the ladybirds which plague the town throughout the novel were a real manifestation of the conditions in England that summer. The ghostly apparitions which do occur in the novel, are low-key but have a definite purpose in mind.

Overall, I would rate this as a good book- It's a very quick read and well worth picking up on that basis, but not one of the classics in the field.