ShortBookandScribes #BookReview – The Barbecue at No. 9 by Jennie Godfrey

The Barbecue at No. 9 by Jennie Godfrey will be published tomorrow by Hutchinson Heinemann. My thanks to the publishers and Jennie for the fabulous proof package.

It’s the summer of 1985 and the residents of Delmont Close are preparing a neighbourhood barbecue to watch the biggest music event in history: Live Aid. A day like no other that will end having reached millions and changing the lives of all who attend.

House-proud Lydia Gordon, whose idols are Princess Di and Delia Smith, is determined to put on a show that will impress everyone – with her posh garden and state-of-the-art television, and her sweet husband and two children, Hanna and David.

But as the guests flood into number nine, so do all of the secrets that have been kept in the close.

Rita, a new neighbour from Australia, is hoping for a fresh start but harbours a shocking event in her past; Steve, a young Falklands veteran, battles his own demons; and Mr Wilson is surely too good-looking to ever be trusted.

But as the hours count down to the last performance of the night, it’s Lydia who faces the heart-breaking truth that her immaculate home and flawless family might not be so perfect after all.

And if each of their neighbours is guilty of hiding something, so are the Gordons at number nine …

The Barbecue at No. 9 takes place on the day of the Live Aid concert in July 1985, an event that I think turned out to be more momentous than most people could have imagined at the time. Certainly the day is pretty momentous for the residents of Delmont Close. There is a street plan of the close at the beginning of the book which shows all the residents. The main ones featured in this book are Hanna Gordon and her family at no. 9, Steve and his mum at no. 20 and Rita at no. 15, although many of the other residents play a small role too.

The story is broken up into the hours of the concert and who was on stage at the time. It’s such a brilliant idea to take Live Aid as a basis for the book and for the barbecue that brings everyone on the close together. Emotions are running high, especially for Hanna and Rita who have secrets that will rock the worlds of their families and their neighbours. The pacing is excellent and kept me interested all the way through, with these individual lives coming together to create a kind of pressure cooker that was bound to explode eventually.

As with Jennie Godfrey’s first book, The List of Suspicious Things, it’s the characters that stand out, with the backdrop of a point in history to anchor them. Hanna, Steve and Rita are memorable characters who I came to care about (and I must admit to a soft spot for Prince the dog). It felt authentic to the 80s too and put me right back there (Hanna’s mum Lydia’s style icons are Princess Di and Krystle Carrington!).

This is another great read from this author and I can’t wait to see what she writes next.

Jennie Godfrey was raised in West Yorkshire in a mill-working family and her debut novel, The List of Suspicious Things, was inspired by her childhood there in the 1970s. In 2020, Jennie gave up her corporate career to build a life around books. She is now a writer and part-time bookseller who lives, and writes, in the Somerset countryside.