Product Description

Cissie is a stand-up comedienne and national darling. Helena is the toast of Broadway. Maggie is an extremely beautiful but troubled actress - and she's cracking up fast, in fact she's 'out of her tree'. When Cissie takes Maggie to see Helena in New York, it leads to trouble straight away: Maggie disappears into the freezing February night, no one knows where. As the search for their friend continues, alarming divisions occur in the lifelong friendships of Cissie, Helena and her stoic husband Luke. And then Cissie disappears too. So, two of the closest of friends are lost separately somewhere in snowbound Manhattan

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #104573 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

PETERBOROUGH EVENING TELEGRAPH
"Ms Walters is a gifted writer who entrances with a moving and darkly comic story"

Review
"Walter's fiction debut is as funny as you'd expect, and twice as frenetic." (THE INDEPENDENT )

"Ms Walters is a gifted writer who entrances with a moving and darkly comic story" (PETERBOROUGH EVENING TELEGRAPH )

THE INDEPENDENT
"Walter's fiction debut is as funny as you'd expect, and twice as frenetic."

Customer Reviews

Would it have been published at all ...
... if it hadn't been written by Julie Walters? It's very confusing - if the jacket didn't give you the expose of the plot it would be difficult to pick it up from the first chapter or two. Then it's hard to follow what's happening as all the chapters are short and jump from one character to another, plus there are lots of flashbacks to each character's past within each of these chapters. As Julie uses the pronoun "she" a lot of the time, I couldn't work out which of her female characters she referred to until half way through the chapter. I haven't bothered finishing this book as it's too much mental work for very little enjoyment. It is certainly not the least bit funny.

Couldn't wait for it to be over
I love Julie Walters' sense of comedy and was really looking forward to her debut novel, and brought it on holiday with me. Big mistake. To say I am disappointed is an understatement. The book was confusing, very difficult to grasp what was happening to which character, and in the end, I cared for not one person in the book. Not once did I even crack a smile reading it. Perhaps I wasn't supposed to? The most annoying thing was the fact that for some reason, most of the characters spent time falling on the floor... I felt like doing that after reading it! Avoid it at all costs.

A solid attempt at something original
I decided to review this book after purchasing it from Amazon as there seems to be a bit off a "1 star review" bandwagon going on with it, and I was certain that as accomplished an actress and as interesting an interviewee as Julie Walters would not put her name to something so poor.

The book is difficult to get into, that's true. It takes patience and persistence which perhaps the modern reader in general doesn't have. Stay with it and you do get an interesting, emotive tale, with very different and quite compelling characters. Sometimes when Walters builds up some momentum with the storyline she loses it by going off at an obscure tangent in the following chapter, but then this isn't a traditional novel.

Perhaps part of the problem here is that people are expecting Julie Walters to write in the style of one of the many memorable characters she has played in her acting work or perhaps expect her to write in the style of some of the great writers whose work she has portrayed e.g Victoria Wood, Alan Bennett, Willy Russell amongst others.

So 'Maggie's Tree' is not an easy read but is definitely worth investigating if you want to read something a little different to the generic thrillers and romance novels which make up the bestsellers lists these days.