Stevie‘s review of A Happy Accident by Evan Tyler
Contemporary Romance published by Amazon Digital Services 9 Mar 13
Writing fiction about the recent past can lead to any number of factual errors, especially with eras that predate the internet but are not long enough ago to feature in many history books. Likewise, writing fiction about any foreign country, unless one has lived there for some considerable time, involves at least as many potential pitfalls. So why do both at once? And if one does decide to go down that road, why then launch into a novel without apparently doing enough research to not alienate readers living in the country one is writing about and who remember the era one is writing about? I grew up in the 1980s. I have some friends who grew up in the less picturesque parts of Manchester, as well as some who have lived there since. I wanted to like this book before I started. Sadly, the only thing that kept me reading after the first couple of chapters was a desire to find out how the events described in the Prologue developed from the events in Chapter One, and even there I felt badly let down.
In the Prologue, a seven-year-old girl called Choice (odd name for the place and time, but anyway…) finds her mother lying dead in a pool of blood, runs to her grandfather for comfort and promptly goes blind from the shock. We then switch to the first chapter and meet our hero and heroine some years previously…
Kindle Hyrum is a young woman of mixed race living in Moss Side at the very end of the 1970s. Ignoring the unlikeliness of her name for the moment, she also talks like no Mancunian I ever encountered in life, in fiction or on television. Come to think of it, she speaks quite unlike almost anyone I’ve ever encountered in real life. She meets Bobby Carter, aka Ricky Stallion, at a pub gig, where for some reason she is waitressing rather than serving behind the bar or collecting up empties before they get chucked at the band. Because Bobby is playing in what we’re told is a punk band, but their name – The Dare – and the various lyrics quoted throughout the book make me think far more of Adult Orientated Rock than any of the UK bands that were springing up around that scene in the early ’80s.
Bobby and his bandmates are staying in a large hotel (not a small B&B as most UK bands would have done back then) and sleeping four to a twin room (which I know happens in the US, but not so much over here), not to mention behaving in ways that would get all but the most successful rock stars thrown out pretty quickly. The hotel is coincidentally where Kindle works for her day job, and is managed by Mr. Holster (again with the names that don’t feel right!), an old friend of Kindle’s mother (who died of tertiary syphilis, apparently, even though we have the NHS to deal with that sort of thing).
Bobby falls for Kindle and proposes almost immediately (just after midnight on New Year’s Day). She jokingly accepts and says they can get married on the 5th at ‘the Registry’. Leaving aside whether it’s possible to arrange a wedding at such short notice over the Christmas and New Year holidays, we would call such a location the Register Office or colloquially the Registry Office. Anyway, they’re married on the 5th by ‘the officiant’ before ‘a pulpit’ in a ceremony that’s dripping with religious wording (all wrong, wrong, wrong). Kindle then claims she didn’t realise she was agreeing to a real marriage until after she’d signed the papers which I find unlikely in the extreme.
They move into Kindle’s ‘apartment’ (which does also get referred to as a flat every so often) but don’t sleep together because of what happened with Kindle’s mother. Bobby’s band continues playing gigs around Manchester (but nowhere else in the UK, so I’m not sure how the other three are still paying for their hotel room), and Kindle eventually quits both her jobs so she can take acting lessons. She finally agrees to have sex with Bobby and promptly gets pregnant, ruining her first audition due to having morning sickness. They decide to call the baby Choice if a girl (after Bobby’s grandmother) and now we know that the Prologue probably has something to do with this child seven years down the line.
There’s an ‘Interlude’ in which we see Choice a few years older again, and then, back in the main plot, Bobby and Kindle are living happily together until the band lands a record deal – with a catch. The record company thinks that Bobby’s wife and unborn child are bad for the band’s image and he has to choose between his UK family and fame. Encouraged by Kindle, he chooses to go back to the US and his parents, while she turns to Mr. Holster for support. We get told a bunch about what will happen to Bobby in the coming years, though not about how Kindle is going to live and then ultimately die, and then there’s an Epilogue which ties up some of Choice’s story, but mainly serves as a set-up for a potential sequel.
I could list all the other errors in this novel, most of which relate to ways in which the UK is not the US, but I should end with a couple of positives, even if the book definitely rates as a failure for me. There are only two typos that I spotted, and the reportage style of the narrative doesn’t jar too badly, although I know some people don’t get on with that sort of thing.
Grade: F
Summary:
A Story Inspired by Steven Tyler: The first book in a three-part series
It happened by accident, a lottery of events…
In 1988, a blind seven-year-old lay in a hospital room longing for her mother, unaware that eight years earlier a chance encounter occurred that would shape her life.
American musician Bobby Carter moved to Manchester, England with one objective—to become a major player in the postpunk scene of the late Seventies. His quest for stardom steers him in the direction of Kindle Hyrum, whose feistiness is only exceeded by her raw beauty. Though Bobby’s steady pursuit trumps Kindle’s cheeky resistance—sweeping them into present bliss—past secrets, new temptations, and a series of hapless and happy accidents will determine their future…and the future of a blind child.
Set to the lyrical soundtrack of the 60s and 70s, A Happy Accident is a story of love and choice that transcends the ages.
No excerpt available.
