When plans are upended, who can turn them the right way up?
Kind-hearted and practical psychologist Colin Palmer has spent decades helping his clients. Now he’s under pressure to retire and hit the road in a new caravan with his wife Joyce.
However, when Joyce abruptly heads off on her own adventure, Colin’s perfectly ordered world is flipped upside down. He’s left grappling to make sense of their marriage, who he is and what he wants.
Enter no-nonsense, blunt, firecracker ex-nurse Shirley Royal! Recently widowed, Shirley is also searching for meaning after losing the bedrock of her existence. She’s ripe for a new project and Colin might just be it!
But just when Colin’s future appears bright and assured, thanks to Shirley’s friendship, Joyce tumbles back into his world. How will he now navigate a path between his old life and new?
Fiona McCallum was raised on a cereal and wool farm near Cleve on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula and remained in the area until her mid-twenties, during which time she married and separated. She then moved to Melbourne and on to Sydney a few years later.
McCallum’s first novel, Paycheque, was published in 2011 and became a bestseller. In the twelve years since, she has written another thirteen bestselling novels. Right Way Up is McCallum’s seventeenth novel.
Currently residing in Adelaide, McCallum is a full-time novelist who writes heart-warming stories that draw on her rich and contrasting life experiences, love of animals and fascination with human nature.
A sense of excitement coursed through me when I started reading Right Way Up. First of all, Colin stole the show. He’s a great main character and watching his life get turned upside down, and then right-side-up, is humorous, heartwarming, but, at the same time, heartbreaking. He spent most of his life living a specific way with Joyce by his side, and then poof! It was all gone. McCallum’s done an excellent job at highlighting that all of us can ‘come of age’ no matter how long we’ve lived. Change is inevitable and it can strike at any moment!
From the synopsis, it’s easy to discern that Shirley is wild and fun; she’s the exact type of excitement that Colin needs to turn his life around. However, when reading the book, I found her quite tender and deep. McCallum is an expert at making all of her characters three-dimensional, giving the pages life with their ambitions and backstories. Even someone like Joyce, who comes and goes, has lots of depth, which I couldn’t help but admire.
The book does a great job at building tension for the intense and downright hilarious latter half where Joyce comes back, complicating the relationship between Colin and Shirley. Things were going so well! The chemistry between the trio, with their excellent and well-paced dialogue, leads to an arduous tug-o-war between Colin’s past and his new way of life, which he’s established with Shirley. It’s a wonderfully relatable tale, perfect to read with a snug blanket and warm cup of tea!
Leave a Reply