Dog Days, Glenn Miller Nights
By (Author) Laurie Graham
Quercus Publishing
Quercus Publishing
1st January 2012
27th October 2011
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
823.92
Paperback
224
Width 130mm, Height 196mm, Spine 20mm
160g
They like it if you're marvellous for your age. If you can't be that, they want you down Plaistow Crematorium, not hanging about here, taking up bus seats.'
So says Bernie Gibbs, living on her memories on the seventh floor of an East End high-rise. Her diet is mainly chocolate bars and she yearns for action, or at least for the re-opening of the old Imperial Dance Hall, where she used to have good times. One of her ex-husbands, Jimmy Dwyer, turns up from nowhere with a greyhound that needs a temporary home, then disappears again. Seeing Jimmy revives memories of the War, when Birdie and her friends did their bit. She still does her bit today, though the world around her doesn't make much sense. When the Fruit Bowl Estate boils over in the scorching summer of '95, Birdie gets all the action she can handle.'A joy to read. It's funny and passionate and encapsulates an era of wistful innocence' Maureen Lipman. * Maureen Lipman *
Laurie Graham is a former Daily Telegraph columnist and contributing editor of She magazine. The author of several acclaimed novels, the most recent were Life According to Lubka and At Sea. She lives in Dublin. Visit her website at www.lauriegraham.com.