Having enjoyed Dawn O’Porter’s The Cows so much I was delighted when her publishers Harper Collins sent me a copy of her latest book So Lucky to review. It’s clear from So Lucky O’Porter has found a formula and she’s sticking with it, once again this book centres on the private lives of three women, Ruby, Beth and Lauren, whose lives are about to unexpectedly intertwine and I’m glad. Glad, glad, glad because it’s not often you get to read about women, from a women’s point of view.
This is the main theme of So Lucky, it’s not often you really glimpse much of anyone’s inner lives and combined with the pressure to brand yourself as happy and successful on social media, we can easily fall into the trap of thinking the people around us are ‘so lucky’. O’Porter doesn’t shy away from any touchy subjects, we are after all reading the inner thoughts of her characters. Sexual desire, maternal feelings (or lack thereof) and the walls we put up to protect ourselves all get the O’Porter treatment.
Each character is wonderfully distinct, without relying on any clunky devices O’Porter was able to conjure a heaviness and sense of claustrophobia around Ruby’s velvet-clad character, frustration around new mum Beth and a plasticness around model and influencer Lauren.
My only gripe is with the 36-year-old character Beth referring to herself as middle-aged and not realising that, like her 26-year-old assistant Risky (read the book), she is a fellow millennial. But it’s a minor complaint and the way the press talks about Millennials you’d think they were 12, so it’s understandable perhaps that Beth would be confused about her generational placing. And O’Porter’s characters very much live in the real world, all responding to the pressure put on women and each bending, breaking and strengthening with each bump in the road.
So Lucky is a darkly witty read with some fantastically funny lines mixed with emotional torment and visceral descriptions, all mysteriously tied up in an uplifting, compelling story.
So Lucky by Dawn O’Porter is published by Harper Collins and available to buy from 31st October 2019
