Hippy Dinners Britmums book club book review

Hippy Dinners by Abbie Ross was the latest read from Britmums book club and it made for a perfect holiday read on our long flight out to Canada over the summer. We were so fortunate with our holiday weather being so sunny that we were out and about the whole time and then collapsed into bed in the evenings so I was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to get a spare moment to finish this book.

Then it rained for our last 3 days away and that was the perfect opportunity for some indoor time reading and I finally got to finish reading Hippy Dinners. 

The book is basically an account of the author's childhood and after reading Clare Balding's autobiography 'My animals and other family' for Britmums book club last year, I was very much looking forward to reading this. I wondered if reading about someone else's memories would evoke memories of my own as had happened before. 

And yes it did. It is incredible just how many memories are filed away and waiting to be rediscovered with a little prompting. 

One of the themes that may ring true with many is the concept of wanting to fit in as a child of not being different. There's a quote from the book on the front cover that makes me smile 'why be different? What's the point in that?'

Of course nowadays I love different. I love that j is different wiith his aspergers brain and different way of thinking, I love that we were 'different' as a family when we homeschooled the kids, I celebrate the things I enjoy doing these days even if they are different from other people's hobbies. 

But when I think back to my childhood, being the same as other kids really was important. When everyone else had a my little pony, I resented the fact that I had a toy unicorn which most definitely was not a my little pony. When my dad took me to the shoe shop for new shoes I hated ending up with strange styles that were probably really fashionable for grown ups at that time, but all I wanted was plain black t-bar style school shoes. Wasn't that obvious to my parents? Why did they always buy me something that my school friends considered weird and different. Ditto for coats. Everyone else had regular coats and mine were just odd and different looking- once again my dads taste in fashion being reflected rather than anything normal. I hated it. 

Ok so my parents weren't hippies but it was still bad. My mum was an 'older' mum and I remember noticing just how huge the age gap seemed to be between her and one of my best friends mum who was a particularly cool and very young mum. 

In this book, the threat of her parents becoming full-blown hippies looms large in Abbie Ross's mind or 'Abs' as she's often referred to. 

I loved how the normal mixed with the abnormal in this book. Experiences many of us could relate to like memories of John Craven on the telly and watching those tiny red bugs that come out in the sunshine on brick walls. And then rather more bizarre experiences of friends and relatives very specific to this person and this situation. 

I felt it was slightly slow to get going in the initial pages but once I got into the swing of things and felt I knew more about each character it was definitely a book that I didn't want to put down. There were parts of this book that were laugh out loud funny. Parts I even read out loud to my husband and kids as I knew they'd find it funny and parts I definitely wouldn't read out to my kids.

I loved reading about her sister's antics when she role played being a nurse and I grew rather fond of next door neighbour Philip and his peculiar behaviours.  

There were also a few sections of the book that were quite moving but as it was written as childhood memories and kids don't always fully understand those difficult situations whilst they are young, things weren't dwelt upon and the book moved on from the sadder events. 

Overall a very enjoyable read and one that I am grateful to have read as it led me to reminisce about my own childhood memories. 

Disclosure: I received this book as part of britmums book club for the purposes of review. All opinions are my own. You can find out what others thought of this book on the linky here.