I really liked Richard Woolley's book BACK IN 1984.

It gives an accurate, touching and involving look at life in the North of England in the early eighties for a couple trying to learn to live with each other, make babies, stay involved in politics (e.g. Getting up at 5.30 to go on striking miners' picket lines!), hold down their jobs and deal with the death of one of the ‘heroine's’ parents – to name just one of the specific dramatic events involved.

A literate but very accessible read with fast moving prose and a wonderful ability to get behind emotions and depict chracters as real living people. Also contains some beautiful self-contained flashback stories revealing key moments in the past lives of both protagonists – I especially liked the one about how the couple first met at a community Bonfire night party in a northern backstreet!

I've also read Woolley's two other novels SAD-EYED LADY OF THE LOWLANDS and FRIENDS AND ENEMIES. The former is a weird, but gripping whodunnit – with a feisty and persistant Dutch heroine – set in Amsterdam. The latter, a roller coaster historical romance and mystery that covers seventy years of recent history (especially Coldwar Berlin and eve-of WW2 England) as a young filmmaker goes in search of the truth about his origins and the early love-life of his mother.

This is an author to watch.