On Hampstead Heath by Marika Cobbold

 

On Hampstead Heath by Marika Cobbold.

Published 15th April 2021 by Arcadia Books.

From the cover of the book:

Thorn Marsh was raised in a house of whispers, of meaningful glances and half-finished sentences. Now she's a journalist with a passion for truth, more devoted to her work at the London Journal than she ever was to her ex-husband.

When the newspaper is bought by media giant The Goring Group, who value sales figures over fact-checking, Thorn openly questions their methods, and promptly finds herself moved from the news desk to the midweek supplement, reporting heart-warming stories for their new segment, The Bright Side, a job to which she is spectacularly unsuited.

On a final warning and with no heart-warming news in sight, a desperate Thorn fabricates a good-news story of her own. The story, centred on an angelic apparition on Hampstead Heath, goes viral. Caught between her principles and her ambitions, Thorn goes in search of the truth behind her creation, only to find the answers locked away in the unconscious mind of a stranger.

Marika Cobbold returns with her eighth novel, On Hampstead Heath. Sharp, poignant, and infused with dark humour, On Hampstead Heath is an homage to storytelling and to truth; to the tales we tell ourselves, and the stories that save us.

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Thorn Marsh is a journalist in the old style. Long-standing Editor of the news desk at her beloved London Journal, one of the last bastions of decent reporting, she believes in printing the facts and holds the responsibility granted to the media as the Fourth Estate as sacred. But something is afoot at the Journal. It has been taken over by the media giant The Goring Group and under the guardianship of a 'media consultant' the Journal is about to be brought firmly into the twenty-first century and rebranded as click-bait central, with very little regard to the actual truth. Thorn's kind of reporting is no longer required, thank you very much, and she has been side-lined into working on the light-hearted, news free, midweek supplement London Living, specifically the rather ominously entitled The Bright Side page, which will involve her writing heart-warming and inspirational stories - something which Thorn is most certainly not suited for.

Thorn's upbringing, and her passion for the truth are not conducive to writing the sort of content now required of her, so after a drunken session with her ex-husband, Thorn resorts to making up a story about a man seen leaping from Viaduct Bridge into a pond on Hampstead Heath. Although such a man does exist, did jump for reasons unknown, and surprisingly survived the drop, Thorn spins the tale as that of the 'Angel of the Heath' and embellishes it by adding in that he saved a drowning woman - a tale which unfortunately takes off out of all proportion and goes viral. Trapped in a lie that she cannot now confess to, Thorn has to weave a web of half-truths and downright whoppers to keep her in a job and she begins to question who she is becoming. As she is forced to dwell on the truth behind the man she has made an unwitting hero, she must confront her own secrets and lies, and what she finds affects her in ways she could never have imagined. 

Sometimes you start reading a book and know from the very first page that you are going to love it, wherever the story takes you. On Hampstead Heath by Marika Cobbold is that kind of book. 

The characters here are rich, varied and realistically flawed, and Cobbold weaves her threads around them with a deft touch, taking us on a journey that she playfully hints at the direction of with a portentous first chapter. It is a heart-felt lament for good old fashioned journalism, and I found the shattering of everything Thorn values surprisingly emotional - I defy you not to feel that the kind of lowest common denominator reporting that takes the place of her ideals is distressing in the extreme, and a sad indictment of the kind of journalism we see so much of today. But more than that, this is a book about the importance of truth in a wider sense too - the truth between friends and loved ones that can easily become subverted and lead to misunderstandings; the truth you must acknowledge to yourself about the kind of person you really are; and the truth about acts of the past that should never be allowed to be forgotten.

There is a lot here to tug firmly on your heartstrings, but it is also full of the most brilliant humour that will make you chuckle on and off throughout, despite the poignancy of the story. Cobbold throws up a lot for us to examine as part of her exploration of truth, including the influence of social media and the impact of family secrets on the way we see ourselves in adulthood. I have to say it was also a delight to have a protagonist who was able to really shine as a middle aged woman.

This is my first Marika Cobbold novel, but it will most definitely not be my last. I have fallen in love with her writing and am looking forward to the enjoyment of exploring every one of the seven books in her back catalogue. In many ways it reminds me of the sublime Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers in how it examines our feelings about the things we hold dear, which is a very good thing indeed. I cannot recommend this one highly enough.

On Hampstead Heath is available to buy now in hardback and e-book formats from your favourite book retailer.

Thank you to Georgina Moore from Midas PR for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review and to Amber Choudhary from Midas PR for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the author:

Marika Cobbold was born with newspaper ink flowing through her veins. She used to visit her father and grandfather at their offices at the Gothenburg-Post, the Swedish broadsheet her grandfather had rescued from oblivion decades earlier. At home, when Marika wasn’t reading, she listened as the grown-ups around her discussed the issues of the day, and to the stories told by her mother and great aunt, who was a writer.

She left Sweden for England when she was nineteen, with vague plans of studying law, but eventually what her grandfather called ‘the family curse’ caught up with her, and some years later she wrote her first novel, Guppies For Tea. She has been writing ever since.