Product Description

Cath and Si are best friends. Total opposites, always together, and both unlucky in love. Cath is scatty, messy, and emotionally closed. Si is impossibly tidy, bitchy, and desperate for a man of his own. When Portia steps back into their lives, her reappearance sets off a chain of events that tests them to the limit. Does Portia have a hidden agenda, or is she just looking for happy endings all round? Whatever the answers, none of them could ever predict the outcome ...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22911 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
After working on her career at a top London advertising agency for the best part of a decade, Cath yearns to leave and open her own bookshop. Lucy, married to Cath's old Uni buddy, Josh, longs to run a cafe. So when a suitable site comes up, the girls combine their dreams and Bookends is born. However, opening a trendy book café (as opposed to cybercafé) is a fairly minor sub-plot in Bookends. This is a novel about the lives, hopes and dreams of a group of thirtysomethings, living in West Hampstead, who (mostly) met at University and have moved on, for better or worse: Cath is disenchanted and has long-since stopped trying to (a) manage her Michael-Jackson-circa-1973 hair (b)wear anything other than black that she hasn't owned for more than five years, and (c) find a suitable beau. Luckily, Si--desperate to find the man of his dreams and an expert at applying haircare products and shopping at designer stores--makes a perfect best friend. Apart from improving her appearance, he's great for those awkward social occasions that, even in our postmodernist world, still require a male escort. Then, out of the blue, a former member of the old University gang turns up and, hey presto, things start to change. Beautiful, elegant, clever Portia appears to have it all; it takes a couple of hundred pages to discover what she's been looking for. The strange thing about Bookends is that Portia turns out to be merely a sub-plot.

Jane Green's latest novel is about the love and trust and enduring friendships of a bunch of young hopefuls whose lives take the usual twists and turns and ups and downs as they mature into thoughtful, rounded adults. Green is an author whose readers either love or hate her, If you love her, you'll want to read her fourth novel; if you don't, you might be surprised by Bookends. --Carey Green

About the Author
Jane Green is the author of Straight Talking, Jemima J, Mr Maybe, Babyville and Spellbound.

Customer Reviews

Absolutely brilliant!
I loved Mr Maybe - it is and perhaps always will be my favourite Jane Green, but 'Bookends' comes a close second.

Like all J Green books, you can't put it down, it sweeps you into the heroine's emotions from page one. I read it in 2 days. I disagree with the last few reviewers who accuse her of doing the same thing over and over - I actually found this book different from 'Mr Maybe' - it focuses on friendship and the romance element is more of a sub-plot. Yes, she is using very familiar motifs eg the gay best friend, but she gets away with it because somehow she writes with so much charm and passion, you believe in the characters, and feel for them. Other writers in this genre have used these motifs and you immediately groan and think, "I've read this before" but the skill of Bookends is not so much the subject matter but the interesting and compelling way that she deals with it.

I also disagree with the review in 'The Times'. Like all good female fiction, the book works on an emotional level, not an intellectual one. If you're going to approach this book as a cynical critic, you're bound to find fault. But the remaining 99% of us 'normal' readers love it - anyone who isn't moved at Si's dilemma at the end of the book would have to have a heart of stone and like many of the readers, I was blinking away tears.

pleasing, but shallow
This book is quite pleasing, but shallow. The characters are not developed fully and have far more potential than is ever exploited. I'm afraid that I also found her constant misuse of grammar intensely irritating. However, as I did find myself wanting to know what happens to the characters, it does deserve 3 stars. Use it to while away a long journey and it won't disappoint.

Her best yet - Bookends is a brilliant novel!
I've read all of Jane Green's other novels, and enjoyed them all very much. But Bookends is even better. It's about the lives and loves of a group of thirtysomethings who were at university together, and who now live near each other in North London. Cath is kind, nice, shy, a bit useless about herself and what she wants out of life, but her best friend Si keeps her together and make sure she shaves her legs and conditions her hair occasionally. They hang out with married couple Josh and Lucy, and their lives seem fairly ordinary until several events happen which change their lives forever.

This is quite honestly a book which makes you cry. And smile, and laugh, and wince in recognition of what it's like to have friends who you love dearly, to be single and straight or single and gay and searching for love. It's about friendship, which is a very underrated subject. I think this is a truly wonderful book, a great page turner, and so much more readable and original than all the other 'relationship' books out there at the moment. I managed to get hold of a proof from a friend and read it in one go - buy a copy, you won't regret it.