The Baggage Handler by Colin Browne

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It’s scary when you have a book written by a friend on your bookshelf. To be honest – my pile of books written by people I know is getting bigger and I very seldom tend to it as I am a pure coward. Even if you don’t know that friend very well, there definitely exists a bit of tension between yourself and this book that you feel kind of obligated to. I know in some worlds a five star rating for a friend is a given – and I do not disagree with this because I believe that completely unbridled and biased support for a friend is absolutely wonderful and it has its place in holding up the receiver of that support – but I sort of feel unable to offer that kind of support in the book world because it is a world so close to my heart. If you were to create a video game or knit a scarf I might unashamedly brand you flawless – here I cannot do so without feeling like my integrity is being severely compromised. Now… it very unlikely that I will ever give a friend (or an acquaintance)a terrible review because for the most part I am not a soul-destroying art demon. What I do try to do is pull out the things that worked for me and focus on those. I also try to judge work for itself and not for what my particular tastes might be, which is not always very easy because I have such specific taste. For instance, I find YA fiction especially hard to judge because I don’t think I relate to run-of-the-mill teenagers very well at all. In fact when I read these books I kind of tend to think of my step daughter and go “will she like this in a few years time?” and go from there. Anyway – the point is that I try to judge a book for what it is and where it fits in as far as the literary world is concerned and then I go from there. But for this book? This book I just gave it five stars because I enjoyed reading it very much. It is 100% *MY* genre for one (can we call it “blokelit”? I love blokelit!)When I give a book 5 stars it is simply because the book has my *it* requirement. I never know when I am going to find my *it* requirement and I have found it so seldom lately but this one just had *it* for me. Keep writing Colin Browne my dear friend. You will be up there with Tony Parsons and Nick Hornby and Mike Gayle in no time. I am so glad I finally got around to nodding along with your book



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