Charlotte Street

Book: Charlotte Street

Author: Danny Wallace

Publisher: Ebury Press

Year: 2012

Rate: 4,5

The Plot:

It is a story of Jason Priestley (not the actor), an ex-teacher who starts writing as a new career for a newspaper. One day, he helps a girl who was taking a cab, but he keeps with her disposable camera, accidently. Jason wants to find her not just for giving the disposable camera back, but because he thinks she is the one.

For your own safe:

Before you read it you must have three characters in mind: the disposable camera, the girl and Charlotte Street. Yes, I consider disposable camera and Charlotte Street as characters, truly. Danny Wallace was brilliant when he chose a random encounter to show how Jason is living his life, his relationship with his ex-girlfriend, his friendship with Dev and lots of ordinary happenings in a human being’s life.

My Thoughts:

Maybe some people could not consider Charlotte Street as Chick Lit. It is acceptable because first of all, the main character is not a woman, neither the author. However, Jason’s feelings and experience are so closed to many female characters that we usual read in Chick Lit. Then I will take a risk, because I reckon the story belongs to the genre.

Few days before reading Charlotte Street, I read reviews and asked others readers what they thought about the book. For my surprise, I had two different points of view: first group considered not a good story because the main plot was too confused; the second one thought was amazed as the author describes London as scenery and guides the whole story. It is a Love and Hate dichotomy for sure. My decision was to read and decide what 50/50 I am part of.

I confess that in the beginning it was areally confused text, however I didn’t stop reading I wanted to find a reason of all messy thing. I believe I did: the main character is confused, too many conflicts, so maybe it was on purpose. It seems the characters are real.

In the end of the book, I realized I am part of the group that loves Charlotte Street!

Danny's site: http://dannywallace.com/

See you next time,

Inessa Silva