It’s 1990. The Happy Mondays are in the charts, a 15-year-old called Kate Moss is on the cover of the Face magazine, and Julia Roberts wears thigh-boots on the poster for a new movie called Pretty Woman.
February Kingdom is nineteen years old when she is knocked sideways by family tragedy. Then, one evening in May, she finds an escaped canary in her kitchen and it sparks a glimmer of hope in her. With the help of the bird called Yellow, Feb starts to feel her way out of her own private darkness, just as her aunt embarks on a passionate and all-consuming affair with a married American drama teacher.
Readers around the world fell in love with Eva Rice’s modern classic, The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets, in which she brought a 1950s London to life in vivid historical detail. Rice’s talent for transporting her readers shines in This Could Be Everything, with every page of this time-machine of a novel blasting 90s nostalgia.
I’ll admit, I do find it slightly confronting that the 90s are now long enough ago to be an appropriate setting for a period novel, but Eva Rice makes it well worth it. I loved the sensory immersion of this reading experience, with the fashion, music, and even scents of the era richly conveyed. The Top 40 pop charts frame every scene, and drugstore perfumes seem to waft from the pages.
This is a feel-good novel about hope, love and the powerful bond between sisters. Set against a backdrop of grief, its premise sounds like it could be a heavy read – and I’m particularly sensitive to stories about loss and sisterhood. But from the start, it’s clear that this is not a story about death, but one about life, and choosing to live, and all the reasons we have to keep going.
February’s witty narration so believably and beautifully conveys her somewhat reluctant path to resilience, and the eccentric cast of characters that form her community – the kind Theo, the exuberant Plato, the ever-patient Ann and Robert – are all so life-affirming. The Michael Hutchence cameos are also a surprising and heartwarming touch!
This Could Be Everything is a coming-of-age story with its roots under the pavements of a pre-Richard Curtis-era Notting Hill that has all but vanished. It’s about what happens when you start looking after something more important than you, and the hope a yellow bird can bring.
This novel will appeal to readers pining after a bygone era of Levi 501s and Walkmans, but even if you don’t miss seeing waifs grace the cover of Seventeen Magazine, this evocative, heartfelt novel will draw you in and leave you feeling warm and satisfied with its universal message of acceptance and hope.
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