As something of a break from the various urban fantasies I've been reading lately
(and because it was discounted on Kindle, my usual reason for trying anything I
hadn't already planned on buying,) I thought I'd give Jonathan Harvey's venture into
comic novels a go. Harvey is course the playwright best known for
Beautiful
Thing, although for the last several years his day job has been as head writer
on
Coronation Street. And that informs the story of
All She Wants,
about a soap star whose career goes on the skids early on in the book, before we
flash back to her earlier life in which all she ever wanted was to star in the
Liverpool-set soap filmed near where she grew up. It's funny, although its story is
every bit as soapy and random as those its lead character has to act in, and the
attempt to add a more serious side with a wife-beating storyline feels a bit glib in
the circumstances.
