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Chosen for September by Victoria Hoyle of Eve's Alexandria
Benny and Shrimp is a fairytale-romance for grown-ups, with all the things a good fairytale should have: love, sex and death in spades. The story centres on ‘Shrimp’, a widowed librarian in her mid-30s who spends her lunchtimes at the cemetery staring at her husband’s grave, not out of hysterical grief but because of a bemused listlessness. There she meets Benny, a lonely farmer with several fingers missing from his left hand who stands in danger of becoming an Old Bachelor. They could not be more different: Shrimp is a culture junkie, who enjoys nothing more than a trip to the opera, while Benny is defiantly grounded in the realities of his dairy herd and yearns for a woman he can make a home with. But the attraction is undeniable, and despite everything – the arguments, the misunderstandings, the awkwardness – they embark on an affair that can’t possibly last. I’m not usually one for ‘relationship fiction’ but Katarina Mazetti expresses the impossibilities of love in modern times, and uses gender stereotypes with a self-conscious irony that endears her to me. She does it without being twee or resorting to cliché (except with the aforementioned irony), and she’s funny too. The book has sold over a million copies in Europe, and has been made into a successful film in its native Sweden, and I can see why.
You can read more of Victoria's reviews at http://evesalexandria.typepad.com
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Price: £7.99 £6.99
