First of all I'm sorry this is the second in a row book post but that's because Friday's post didn't make it live because of Uni work, second of all I'm not really sorry at all because I've been loving reading lately!
Hachette NZ kindly sent me this copy of The Vintage Springtime Club* by Beatrice Meier the other week and I just had to make it top of my tbr pile because of how gorgeous the cover is. Just look at it, how lovely is that? It may have been the sole reason I requested it, but hey I'm a designer I do visual things for a living of course that's what would call my name. But I did actually love the book too! Set in Germany, it's about five elder people who have either lost their spouses, their children have jet setted across the world, their houses are falling down, or the whole lot. They decide to move in together and relive flatting from their younger days. It all goes really well until one of them gets sick and all hell breaks loose. Did I mention there's a dog as well? A chunky dachshund called Ralph!
But anyways, what did I think? I'm hardly ever a fan of books that have different narrators for each chapter, and this didn't help. Almost every character that ever steps into the story gets their own chapter, even the dog gets around four to himself! They don't have any titles to indicate who's telling the story which sort of throws you each time, who's point of view is this now? However I admit it did help tell the story in a way one singular point of view wouldn't, and Meier managed to make it flow nicely. Once you got your head around the fact that the next chapter could be anyone it's quite easy to pick it up, especially once you learn the characters and the way they talk. Most of the chapters are quite short, two or three pages, and sometimes skip months ahead so the story doesn't slow down at all. The storyline was simple, fast paced, and interesting to follow along with, not hard to read.
The characters were really great though, it's not common in books I've read lately for characters to have such complex personalities. Their ages might have contributed to this, young adult protagonists tend to have back stories about their high school years or university maybe, but as these characters were over 60 they had a whole life of back stories to shape their personalities. Harry, the 'say it as it is-smoker-drinker-does what he likes', started off being my most disliked character and ended up being my favourite. The more his personality developed, the more his sarcastic, rude words just turned into cheekiness backed with a hint of love the more I just wanted to squish him for being so lovely. Saying that, some of the characters I liked in the beginning I ended up disliking a little towards the end, if you read it you'll understand why. The fast paced way this book is written allows you to witness all the personality developments and it's really great to see after reading a lot of your basic plain Jane characters lately.
I gave this a 8/10, great characters and easy to read style however some slight parts annoyed me a little. Totally recommend reading if you get your hands on it, also totally recommend shoving loads of photos on Instagram of it as it's just that beautiful!
* This was gifted to me from Hachette NZ however all opinions are my own, especially about the dog!
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