EXCERPT: It’s a simple service at the local crematorium. I’d never given much thought to my death, but if I had I think I would have liked it to be in a church, with masses of flowers, huge crowds, and sweeping music. Instead, I get a handful of people in a municipal building with tinny music and displays of what looks like supermarket blooms.
Mrs. Willis is there though, which is nice. And Sally, and even Kim from the gym. I was pleased to see her. Ana doesn’t come, but that’s not totally unexpected. I hope she and her mum are back in Ukraine and that her dad’s been released from prison. I think she’d have grown up to be someone remarkable, a doctor maybe, or a chemist, or a supermodel. She’d be tall, and strong and beautiful, and I like to think of her living in a flat overlooking a park, with the photo of her dad in pride of place on the mantelpiece and books of his poetry lining the shelves. She’d still wear her hair long, would be married and have a family. This is what I hope, anyway. I hope that whatever Uncle Boo did to her didn’t cause any lasting damage.
Bella’s there though, with her daughter, who must be about eleven now, I guess. They look very similar, but each time Alice checks her phone Bella nudges her and scowls. Bella is still elegant but has, I notice, become more muscular. Perhaps she works out a lot. She’s well-dressed and is wearing a diamond the size of a quail’s egg on the third finger of her right hand. I am pleased for her and, like with Ana, hope that she never got to know what I did and put two and two together.
And Cora and her sisters are there, which pleases me. It’s times like this that you wish you’d sorted all the unfinished stuff. I should have got in touch with Cora in the intervening years and said how sorry I was. It would have been nice to have the chance to be forgiven.
It’s funny how being here means I get the chance to think these things. I didn’t know I had it in me. It’s just such a fucking shame that it’s all come too late. It’s a travesty. That’s what it is.
ABOUT ‘THE SIGNIFICANT OTHERS OF ODIE MAY’: Any one of them could have murdered her… but who did?
On the night Odie May and her married lover are due to celebrate him leaving his wife, Odie goes out to buy a bottle of his favourite wine and, on her way home, is murdered by a woman in a lime green coat.
The next thing Odie knows is that sheâs in a waiting room and thereâs a man called Carl Draper saying heâs her Initial Contact. He is carrying a clipboard and invites her into an interview room.
Over the course of her interview, Carl and Odie track back to the significant others in her life to date to try and work out where sheâs gone wrong, who might have killed her, and why.
In the meantime, Carl also shows Odie whatâs happening in the life sheâs left behind as her mother and her lover, Michael, learn of her death and manage the tricky days that follow it.
But nothing is as simple as it seems. Although Carl has it in his power to return Odie to the moment before she was killed, this comes at a price she may not be able to pay.
MY THOUGHTS: I enjoyed this ramble through the high and lowlights of Odie May’s life and death. She is forced to confront her past when she is suddenly and violently killed on her way to meet her lover.
It’s very hard to like Odie May, but she is entertaining. She is also complex. As her ‘Initial Contact’ Carl takes her back over events in her life, some of them life defining, she has to face up to her covetous nature and her disregard for other people’s feelings. Little pieces of Carl’s life are also revealed.
At times I was sorry for Odie. At others I was angry with her, but one thing I never felt was bored by her.
A thoroughly entertaining story.
âââ.9
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THE AUTHOR: Iâm allergic to mussels, oysters and the like and my grandmother wanted me to be a BBC newsreader when I grew up. Clearly this did not come to pass.
I was born in Guildford and have lived in Bedfordshire, Birmingham, South Wales and Berkshire (not necessarily in that order). I have a BA in English & History from the University of Birmingham, an MA in Victorian Literature & Culture from the University of Reading and an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London.
Following the bad poems and short stories of the platforms and flares days of my teens and the even bleaker stuff of the leg warmers and shoulder pad days of the â80s, my collections, Eleven Rooms, Interference Effects and Yield have been published by Two Rivers Press, and my novels, The Perfect Affair and The Moment and my FREE short-story, Falling for Gatsby are published by Quercus. The Last Day, was published by The Dome Press, and a new novel, The Significant Others of Odie May was published by Matador in July 2021.
Having formerly been the Clerk of The Worshipful Company of Management Consultants and worked for an HR research forum in London, I now teach Creative Writing, run Fresh Eyes and co-ordinate Readingâs Poetsâ CafĂ© on behalf of The Poetry Societyâs Reading Stanza. I am also a regular Radio Reads contributor on BBC Radio Berkshire, have been Chairman of Reading Writers and am a member of the Alliance of Independent Authors, the Romantic Novelistsâ Association, The Poetry Society, The Poetry Book Society, The Society of Women Writers and Journalists and The Society of Authors.
DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Matador via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of The Significant Others of Odie May by Claire Dyer for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.
For an explanation of my rating system please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com
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