People Person

Written By Linda Malek

People Person by Candice Carty-Williams

Reviewed by Linda
📘📘📘📘

Thank you @trapeze_books for this copy!
People Person is a fast-paced and entertaining read set in South London which I LOVEEED!

We meet Dimple Pennington, one of 5 half siblings and the offspring of South London’s jack the lad and notorious womaniser, Cyril Pennington. Each of the siblings is brought up differently but one thing they all have in common is the null relationship with their father.

One of the best scenes in the novel is when Cyril comes to collect his kids one by one in his gold jeep, takes them to Clapham Common for ice cream and their first formal introduction lest there be any funny business between any of them (unknowingly) later on in life. It’s not until many years later that they meet again as a collective and through some far-fetched antics between Dimple and a maniac ex-boyfriend, the siblings rally around her as though they’d never been apart. The rest is history.

Dimple is a very complex character and she is the vehicle that explores family (sometimes toxic) and the varied impact of an absent father (for better and for worse) and many more themes. It is also very interesting to observe how the Pennington siblings become allies and make conscious decisions about how they want to be related at this stage in life. Boundaries are set, harsh truths are delivered and love is learned rather than adopted by default. This scoping phase was so eye opening to read, well-crafted by the author and a reminder that friends and family can be chosen.

But let’s not forget Cyril Pennington. A man too selfish, proud and completely aloof, his only pride and joy is his gold jeep. We barely scratch the surface with Cyril but the little threads we do see have you hooked to learn more about this enigma. I recommend!

Linda Malek

I've always had the urge to set up a forum and voice my thoughts after each read, but never had the confidence to do so alone. 18 months ago, I got my fellow book-loving friends involved and formed The Candid Book Club! Aside from having an exponentially growing to-read pile and deteriorating shortsightedness, we've been lucky to have been invited to publisher events and have attended several talks with our favourite authors (Thank you and long may they continue!) To take a break from the pressures of PhD Chemistry, Jess and I exchanged books all the time and in my youth, I was that kid with the first editions of Harry Potter having already read Gulliver’s travels and some Charles Dickens. At work, my desk is a library and luckily for me I sit next to another bookworm Jack who entertains all the photo-taking. I'm suffering from a chronic case of wanderlust (age-related crisis) so books which are set as far away from home as possible tend to float my boat: Middle East, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Asia...you name it. But if it's got anything to do with Egypt then I'm all over it. So you get the drift...I read all the time, everywhere (on the tube mostly), everyday, a book a week, and very quickly I'm onto the next! And then sometimes there is a book that stops me in my tracks, makes me want to swallow the pages whole, and have it next to me at all times, with some sentences staying with me forever: Shantaram by David Gregory Roberts, anything by Khaled Hosseini, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo (absolute gem of a woman), A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shuklaand and anything by Naguib Mahfouz.

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Things We Do Not Tell the People We Love