The Last Week Of May by Roisin Meaney

I will have to be really careful about what I say about this book, it will be so easy to give the events of this one week in a small Irish town away.  Considering the time frame and relative size of the location where we are transported by the Author an awful lot happens to a large range of people.  That is the real beauty of the story, the various people that litter it's pages.

May has a rather eccentric outlook on life these days, rather than follow the usual career path she has decided that life is too short so she hires herself as a Jill of All Trades and she loves it.  This also means that she is our link between the disparate bunch of characters we meet; they are either, friends, family, neighbours or her clients.  It is a simple enough device but it is used to great effect in this book.

I was going to list the other range of characters but found that I could not really mention any of them without giving away a little bit of the plot.  Considering this is really a book about people it is very strong on plot and each person's personality is an intrinsic part of the plot.  Very deft writing that I found completely sucked me in.  The only issue I had with it was some of the coincidences were just a little too much for believability and the travelling necklace was a bit of a bone of contention as well - I felt that it was overplayed just a little.

Although only split in to 7 distinct chapters - one for each day of the week - each chapter is split in to multiple smaller tales, each giving a view in to one character's current situation throughout the day.  Told more or less chronologically you do find yourself jumping between some characters multiple times during that chapter.  By keeping to a more or less third person telling of the tale you never feel at a loss as to who is the focus of this particular section, which was a relief as with such a wide ranging cast of characters it could have been a disaster.

The stories told deal with aging, homophobia, adultery, domestic violence, the search for love, mother love and, above all, friendship.  Beautifully told and completely engaging I can heartily recommend this read.