Paperback published 12th September 2024 by Mountain Leopard Press.
From the cover of the book:
When your present meets your past, what do you take with you - and what do you leave behind?Eadie Browne is a quirky kid living in a small town where nothing much happens. Bullied at school, she muddles her way through the teenage years with best friends Celeste and Josh until University takes them their separate ways.
Arriving in Manchester as a student in the late 1980s, Eadie experiences a novel freedom and it's intoxicating. As the city embraces the dizzying euphoria of Rave counterculture, Eadie is swept along, ignoring danger and reality. Until, one night, her past comes hurtling at her with consequences she could never have imagined.
Now, as the new millennium approaches, Eadie is thirty with a marriage in tatters, travelling back to the town of her birth for a funeral she can't quite comprehend. As she journeys from the North to the South, from the present to the past, Eadie contemplates all that was then and all that is now - and the loose ends that must be tied before her future can unfold.
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Eadie is an odd little girl, with eccentric parents, a wild imagination, and unfortunate hair. Growing up at 41 Yew Lane, next door to a small town cemetery, most of her companions number amongst the dead and the people who care for them. Bullied at school, her apparently unbreakable friendship with besties Celeste and Josh helps her through the difficult times, until they go their separate ways to university.
Eadie finds herself in the heart of bustling 'town life' in late 1980's Manchester. She has no idea how to cope with the noise and chaos around her. She longs for the quiet of 41 Yew Tree Lane, its slumbering neighbours, and the closeness of Celeste and Josh. But gradually she comes to revel in her new-found freedom, making friends, and riding the wave of the city's emerging Rave culture. Eadie is certain that she has found her true home, but when danger creeps into the euphoric time she and her friends are enjoying, her life begins to unravel.
Years later, a new millennium approaches and has Eadie in a reflective mood. She is now thirty, in a crumbling marriage, and frustrated with the direction of her life. Unfinished business refuses to be ignored, and the only way she can find her path is to finally address it once and for all.
The book begins in small-town country where nothing much happens. Here we meet curious, six-year-old Eadie, who knows all about life and death, following her story through childhood, teenage years, and university days. In parallel, North provides a glimpse of Eadie's present, with a thread of nicely wrought mystery, as she takes charge of laying her ghosts to rest once and for all.
North's wonderfully diverse characters spring from the page, in all their varied shapes, sizes, ages, personality types, creeds, histories, sexuality, and states of existence. Unconventional Eadie holds your focus as she goes on her poignant journey, and the twists and turns of her friendship with Josh and Celeste are beautifully written. North delves into emotionally charged, coming-of-age experiences and life lessons in a way that makes them so relatable.
If you are of a similar age to Eadie (and Freya North) as I am, then there is an extra dimension that makes this book sing. Time and place is captured to utter perfection, thrumming with popular culture and era-appropriate attitudes. I revelled in 1980's nostalgia, especially when it came to Eadie's teenage years, and all the complex feelings that came with her university days. The fashion trends and music came back to life in these pages, and Eadie's eclectic tastes rang melodious bells with me - I had forgotten all about Soundz record shops (how could I?) and the references to bands of my youth made me smile time and time again... hello again, Hipsway, and The Waterboys, how I remember that first time listening to This is the Sea (still one of my favourite ever albums).
There are notable absences in musical references, which perhaps should have made the cut here, but North does an incredible job touching on the sheer breadth and creativity of the musical landscape of the 80s, and, of course, for the purpose of Eadie's story there is a direction that North has very much in mind. For Eadie's story is intrinsically tied to the rise of the Manchester Rave scene, its association with Ecstasy, and the political and social turbulence of the Thatcher years, which North uses quite superbly to echo the rise and fall of events in her character's own life. Rave is always a movement I associate more with the 90s, and is largely unfamiliar to me with my still-brightly-burning New Romantic core, so this was horribly fascinating to read about.
The plot-line following Eadie's present is powerfully poignant, and I really enjoyed how North used this to tie up all the loose ends of not just Eadie's present, but those of several of the other characters who had become like dear friends. If you cherish stories that come full circle in the best way, then I promise you will find this a treat.
Superbly written, this is my favourite kind of 'quiet' story. There are lovely themes of friendship, family, growing up, belonging, acceptance, closure, and the nature of home, that weave steadily through this book. North handles them all with tenderness, humour, and insight, and I found myself sobbing my eyes out by the time I turned the final page. This quirky story certainly worked its way into my heart.
The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne is available to buy now in hardcover, paperback, ebook and audio formats.
Thank you to Mountain Leopard Presd for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.
About the author:
In 2008 Freya North won the RNA Book of the Year award with Pillow Talk.
Across all books and formats, Freya North has sold over two millions books to date.
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