Clover Quinn lives with her dad, Darren, in a
three bedroom house in a small town on the Lancashire coast. The long summer
holidays are here and now she has turned twelve she can be left at home to look
after herself while Darren is on shift driving his bus. There is a watchful eye
and friendly face next door though in the shape of Mrs Mackeral. She has known Clover
since she was born; literally, as she delivered Clover from her surprised
mother on the kitchen floor.
That is one of the few things Clover knows
about her mother, Becky Brookfield; other titbits have been gleaned from her
grandad, her uncle Jim, and her dad’s best friend Colin. Dad Darren, however,
is reticent. He is more than reticent; he is almost in denial. One of the three
bedrooms is stacked high with Becky Brookfield’s stuff that he cannot face
dealing with.
Now Clover, inspired by a school trip to a
museum and a conversation with the curator, decides to use her time home alone
to secretly set up an exhibition in the third bedroom to interpret the remnants
of the mother she never knew.
Told alternately from Clover and Darren’s
perspectives, a picture of normal chaotic family life emerges, with flashbacks
and tangential forays into the lives of minor but well-drawn characters.
As the summer heat builds so does the tension.
As the exhibition nears completion, Clover moves from childhood into
adolescence and Darren notices the first shoots of feelings for another woman.
But the big question is how he will react to the ‘Museum of You’.
It is well done and sensitively written with
the relationship between Clover and Darren particularly touching. And if
sometimes Darren gets a bit maudlin over his loss of Becky, it is balanced by
the humour of Mrs Mackeral’s verbal mix-ups.
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