(Harper Collins Publishers Australia)
If ever there’s a time for redemption, it has to be Christmas, right?
Not simply because the entire festival is centred around that idea in its Biblical roots; beyond that, it’s developed into a time of year when the world is not as moored to its mistakes and its broken manifestations and there’s a magical chance for what it broken to be mended.
And just not mended, where you can see the glued-together cracks or still a wobble in the repaired edifice but made wholly new and wonderful, as if a troubled past or those terrible mistakes never happened.
Whatever the truth of that perception, and there are a great many who like see it as a curse more than a blessing, Christmas has assumed the mantle of the most wonderful time of the year, a wondrously releasing idea that A Special Cornish Christmas by Phillipa Ashley embraces with wholehearted enthusiasm.
Its back cover blurb even proclaims that “This Christmas, everything is about to change …” and if that isn’t a commitment to the Christmas cause then you have to ask what is.
But where A Special Cornish Christmas has some fun, although it really can’t be called that, is with what that change entails.
The initial assumption, of course, is that the change will be for the good because is that the mode and feeling of the season, but as it turns out, while there is the inevitable path to a happy ending, it’s nowhere as straightforward as many of these Christmas tales like to make out.
He [Ran] had enough self-awareness to recognise that the reason he’d been so angry with Madame Odette was that her comments had struck a raw nerve. He did not expect to ‘be with the love of his life’ by Christmas because he’d already met her — and lost her. And it was no one’s fault but his own.
In fact, for all three of the central characters of A Special Cornish Christmas the path to festively happy ever after is way more complicated and messy than anyone could have predicted.
That’s assuming they even believed that change is possible, or even needed.
As A Special Cornish Christmas opens, Bo Grayson, who operates the Boatyard Café in her small cosy coastal town in Cornwall, England – there’s a good reason all these tales are not set in cities; they simply don’t have the geographic snugness for all of the characters to see each other all the time as these narratives usually demand – and her friends, fellow rock ‘n; roll dancers, Angel, whiis happily married to a local fisherman, and Ran, a refugee from the urban wildness of London and is happy to keep to himself for the most part, are waiting in line to see a fortune teller, Madame Odette.
It’s not their usual thing; the town is hosting a fundraising fair and standing in line to see a fortune teller is driven less by a belief in the truth of the medium’s insights and more a desire to help raise the necessary funds.
While scepticism, and then outright rejection of her prophesies abound, all of them have to deal with the fact that she predicted they would all meet the love of their life by Christmas Day.
(courtesy DHH Literary Agency)
These predictions by a woman who may or may be the real thing are quickly dismissed as nonsense.
But soon enough, things begin changing for all three people who have to deal with the fact that whether or not life marches to the beat of crystal balls, it sure has some ways of being unpredictable and making sure that life defied expectations at just about every turn.
Each of these people, Bo and Angel in particular, have to deal with twists and turns, zigging when they want to zagging and at the first Christmas of the story at least, there’s precious little redemptive magic to be had.
But as A Special Cornish Christmas continues on full of rock ‘n’ roll dance shows and beautiful seasonal moments, heartache and happiness – too much of the former and far too little of the latter for anyone’s taste for a while there – the tide of life begins to turn in everyone’s favour, though not anywhere near as fully or fast as any of them would like.
A key feature of the story in this charmingly grounded novel is that each of the characters, Bo especially, have past pain and hurts to contend with, such that even if life was to appear, like some sort of existential fairy godmother clothed in sparkly hope and possibility, and wave its wand to make things better, the target of all this life-changing magical largesse may not want to accept it.
That’s a key thing left out of many of the stories – we are not always ready for better times to come along, too burdened or broken by the past to trust that here finally is the change and wonder we have been longing for.
She [Bo] glanced around her then brushed her lips across his. It might only be a dance but it felt like a new beginning. She might even start to look forward to Christmas again.
A Special Cornish Christmas has magical life-changing moments in warmhearted abundance, and they will make your heart sing as these books always should, but it is also human enough in its storytelling to know we are often held back or limited by our wounds, and that all the magicality in the world can’t instantly fix that.
Well, not straight away, at least.
But eventually? Of course, and the beauty of A Special Cornish Christmas is that as the festive season approaches, with stops and starts and not the seamless trajectories we would like to have happen, Bo, Angel and Ran are slowly having their minds changed and their hearts opened by the specialness of the season.
It’s a potent brew and even if your own Christmas, or your Christmas in July in this case, might be staggering under the weight of troubles too great and heavy to hold aloft, there’s something about reading about the possibility of things getting better than can lift your spirits.
Especially if the characters at the heart of the story feel relatably falible, broken and very human; then perhaps we believe even more in the redeptive power of the season, something that A Special Cornish Christmas embraces wholeheartedly as its characters, and Bo most particularly, begin to see a way to move beyond all the things they have lost and to see the things they might gain as Christmas works its hoped-for magic once again.