The Death Of Mungo Blackwell is the perfect read for dreary winter nights. It's a book full of warmth, wit, growth, and eccentricity from the central characters. Reading this book felt like snuggling into a warm blanket; perfect, sweet escapism into the countryside.
Charlie Price, his wife Velveteen, and their son Gideon, leave their lives in the city (never specified) and move to a small town called Coraloo. Charlie used to be extremely senior in the world of finance but a bad judgement left him fired and without income. In Coraloo, he becomes a 'picker' - he looks for items of potential value in markets and resells them online.
The market is owned by a family called the Blackwells who provide the heart and soul of this book. Most welcome him, but one of them - Shug - stands out in his hostility. The Blackwells often act out their family stories - or 'histories', as they insist - and also hold funerals of family members before those members actually die.
The point of the story is to show how Charlie, Velveteen and Gideon, a family who had everything and who quickly get reduced to nothing, start again and find themselves in the process. Their individual stories are handled with care and compassion, gently guided by various members of the Blackwell family.
This story is fun, vibrant, sweet, and quietly remarkable. It's hard to put it in a genre but I would put it on a bookshelf next to the brilliant "The End of Mr Y" by Scarlett Thomas.
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