The List Of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey

 

It's 1979 and Yorkshire is being terrorised by the Yorkshire Ripper. Best friends Miv and Sharon decide to investigate, hoping they can unmask the man responsible.

The List Of Suspicious Things from Jennie Godfrey is one of those novels you become completely immersed in. The style and language draw you in and you feel as if you are one of the characters. It helped that as a child of the sixties, the story felt very nostalgic for me.

Primarily a book about friendship, this novel also reflects on many of the issues of the time; the fear caused by the Yorkshire Ripper, the decline of the industrialized north and racism to name a few. The author has illustrated how these things impacted on tight-knit communities.

Miv and Sharon are chalk and cheese but complement each other. On the cusp of becoming teenagers, they are in that no-mans land of no longer children, but still not adults. Miv is the driving force of the pair. Virtually motherless, with a father who has little time for her, she is tended by a stern Aunt. At home, Miv loses herself in books such as The Famous Five and you can see how she uses these as a blueprint to investigate. Unfortunately, these stories also reflect a different era and we see how the naive friends end up in some dangerous situations.

Some of the things the girls get up to would be considered inappropriate today, but they show how communities rallied together and supported each other. Unfortunately, they also show a time when gossip was freely swapped but things such as mental health and domestic abuse were considered taboo subjects for discussion. It's the things that aren't discussed, both between neighbours and within families, that give the whole novel a tone of sadness. We learn that people keep living by simply putting one foot in front of the other each day. It is only when tragic events take place that people begin to contemplate their place in life and others open up.

I loved this coming-of-age story, it shows the fierceness of innocence, the bonds of friendship and the excitement of first love set against a community terrorised and worn down.

The List Of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey will be published on 15th February 2024 in hardback, ebook and audio format. My thanks to NetGalley and Hutchinson Heinemann publishers for a review copy.