One of the best value organisations in Suffolk  is the Suffolk Book League (www.sbl.org.uk) whose annual family membership is £15. For this you get reduced entrance fees for nine or so author speakers plus other events. This year’s speakers included Sally Vickers and Chris Mullins. Thursday night’s speaker was Marina Lewycka whose first novel publication was “A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian”. Marina read excerpts from her new book “We Are All Made of Glue” and answered questions afterwards. The web page http://marinalewycka.com/glue.html contains the following excerpt:
“Georgie Sinclair’s husband has left her; her sixteen-year-old son is busy exploring fundamentalist Christian websites and becoming more distant by the day; and all those overdue articles for Adhesives in the Modern World aren’t looking too appealing either. So when she spots Mrs Shapiro, an eccentric old Jewish émigré neighbour with an eye for a bargain and a fondness for matchmaking, rummaging through her skip in the middle of the night, it’s just the distraction she needs. And although they mistrust each other at first – … – a firm friendship is formed over the reduced-price shelf at the supermarket.So when two slimy rival estate agents (one with a taste for bondage) start competing to trick Mrs Shapiro into selling her rickety old mansion, home also to seven stinky cats, Georgie must step in and help her new friend. Along the way she uncovers the long buried mysteries of Mrs Shapiro’s past…During the questions it came out that the book is set in North London (Highbury Fields) and includes unscrupulous social workers who collude with estate agents to identify vulnerable people who own property which might be bought for less than market value.It promises to be a good read.