Book review: Roseland, by Judy Finnigan

Warning: contains spoilers

Judy Finnigan, former doyenne of daytime tv, has – as many celebs these days do – reinvented herself as a best-selling novelist. And, to be fair, her previous two books weren’t bad: the kind of pleasant, inoffensive kind of thing you might read on the beach or at an airport. Both of those, like this latest offering, are set in Cornwall and are what might be called emotion-driven stories, centring round family dramas and close friendships.

Roseland picks up where the last left off. The title refers to a large, gothicky mansion, now run by the NT, where redoubtable family matriarch Juliana Trelawney (mother of dead Eloise, spooky heroine of the previous books) still lives, assisted by a housekeeper. The story begins just as Jack, Eloise’s widower, has met a glamorous new young love and has proposed to her within a very short time. Now all the family and friends must meet his new fiancée, and she herself must begin the hard task of trying to become a stepmother to Jack and Eloise’s children – but who is the newcomer, really, and is she truly hopelessly in love with Jack? Or is there some darker motive at work here? Jack’s dead wife Eloise’s best friend, Cathy, has flown in from Dubai for the wedding and starts trying to make sense of the new arrangement …

So far, so good. I settled down for a nice escapist read, with added Cornish cliffs, beaches and Celtic chapels (all of which featured in the previous books in the series) thrown in for good measure.

Now, I should point out at this stage I have no animosity towards Judy. None whatsoever. I was quite a fan of ‘Richard and Judy’ back in the day, and she always seemed like a good egg, ready for a either laugh or a serious conversation, by turns, and famously fond of a tipple. We are both hard-working Manchester girls (she’s a native, I was brought up there, although not born there), and of a roughly similar age (she’s six years older). A very good pal of mine even lived for a while in the same road as R&J in West Didsbury. I always reckoned – maybe I was deluding myself here – that if we ever met, we’d be sure to get on. Same wavelength, kind of thing.

But dear, oh dear. The first thing to say about this book is that, within a few pages, the exact same wording gets deployed multiple times. ‘She felt at a disadvantage, and she hated that’ (Juliana, p6). ‘It made her feel at a disadvantage, and she hated that’ (Isabella, p20). Isabella gives ‘an impatient huff’ on p14, then ‘huffed’ again on p20. More ‘huffing’ continues later, along with quite a lot of ‘eye rolling’. Oh well, I thought, never mind: press on, give it a chance. But in fact the writing feels very stiff and cliché-ridden throughout. Characters are always coming out with things like ‘Forewarned is forearmed’ and ‘Their love was written in the stars’, and ‘Faint heart never won fair lady’.

Everyone has a slightly twee nickname – Arthur is Artie, Isabella is Izzy, Violet is Letty, Eve is Evie, Eloise is Ellie … it reminds me of a novel I once read years ago where the main character was called Rupert, and everyone persisted in calling him ‘Rupe’, which drove me into an unreasonable rage each time it occurred. It’s rich, pampered, luvvie-ish world where everyone flies in from Australia or the Middle East for a do, people have bijou holiday cottages, fathers call children ‘sweetie pie’, while young men call their grandfather ‘Pops’ and their great grandmother ‘GG’. The women are always reaching for their third coffee, or searching the fridge for wine, or leafing through handfuls of takeaway menus. The air perpetually smells of honeysuckle, thyme, lavender or jasmine. Or sometimes all four. On multiple occasions women wear satin skirts, or satin tops, or satin dresses. I know these are for ‘occasion’ wear, rather than the beach or whatever, but really, there are plenty of other fabrics than satin. Do none of these international jetsetters ever wear linen, velvet, cotton, silk, or lace? Really?

One begins to form the suspicion that, in these fillers, or in writing about Cathy with her ‘chic blonde bob’ and penchant for doughnuts, Judy is writing about herself – not least because the book is dedicated to Richard and to her ‘gorgeous granchildren’; she and Richard have a Cornish cottage in Talland Bay, very similar to Cathy’s in the book; two of the children in this story are called Tom and Sam (the names of two of Judy’s children – they are never mentioned again until right at the end, btw); Jack (also the name of one of Judy’s own children) is a main player; there is a set of twins (Finnigan had twins) and there is a young woman on the will-they-won’t-they verge of matrimony who kept reminding me of Finnigan’s daughter Chloe. (Incidentally, the big plot reveal about this character was obvious from the start of the book, but nevertheless seems to come as a huge shock to all concerned when finally disclosed near the end). Beautiful, blonde, talented Eloise, who previously died of breast cancer leaving two small children motherless but is still driving all the psychology behind the interactions, reminded me of Finnigan’s friend Caron Keating, who also died tragically young of the same disease, leaving two sons. When the children in this book’s trust funds were under discussion, I even started to wonder whether that was a replica of a genuine family conversation they had had. In fact, I ended up reading all the ‘Jack’

character’s dialogue in Richard Madeley’s voice 😄.

The family relationships in this book are fiendishly complicated, largely because all the twisty-turny happenings of the previous episodes have of necessity to be brought back to make sense of the current story. Characters tend to have to keep telling each other their own background for the reader’s benefit – ‘Your grandfather married my half-brother’s cousin, if you remember’, kind of thing. I actually felt it might have been better if the author had done this book as a standalone – but that would clearly have marred the ‘Cornish saga’ aspect of the whole thing (and probably adversely affected any serial film rights, for all I know).

So what of the main plot? Well, the glammy and youthful new fiancé, who works in television scouting out locations, is called Rebecca. Ho ho, you might think – a nod to Daphne du Maurier’s celebrated Cornish heroine. Then this Rebecca dresses up in one of the dead wife’s gowns – like du Maurier’s Rebecca. She pauses while posing on the staircase during a party – like du Maurier’s Rebecca. Next to a portrait of the dead wife – like du Maurier’s Rebecca. It causes such a stir she has to be hustled away, seemingly unaware of what she has done – like du Maurier’s Rebecca. It’s speculated whether or not the housekeeper put her up to it – like … oh well, I’m sure you see where I’m going. The house catches fire, like Manderley. There is a subplot with suspected murder and a holed small boat (in this case, a kayak) in a cove – as in Rebecca. One reviewer said, ‘This book has Rebecca written all over it’. You’re not kidding – especially when large chunks of plot have been lifted directly from it. It’s like a piss-take.

The settings are, it goes without saying, spectacular, and the main characters, Cathy and Jack, are sympathetic. But it’s almost like two books, stitched into one. There’s the everyday holiday doings of an upper-income extended family, which tbf is quite soothing and entertaining, in an Aga saga kind of way. (This is, perhaps, where I think Finnigan’s writing strengths may lie – in the depiction, or even documentation, of the relationships between members of a particular cadre of people). Then there is the gothic melodrama, plonked on top of it, like some hideous grafted add-on. Judy, this isn’t good enough. You’re an English literature graduate – I know you must know this as well as I do. It won’t do. It really won’t.

Dear me.
 

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