Bangles singer Susanna Hoffs’ debut never fails to entertain even if her understanding of Britain seems solely shaped by Jilly Cooper and Richard Curtis
August 25, 2023 09:06
This Bird Has Flown
by Susanna Hoffs
Little, Brown, £9.99
One-time pop star writes romance novel is not necessarily the most promising starting point for a book.
Yet Bangles singer Susanna Hoffs’ This Bird Has Flown surpasses expectation.
It never fails to entertain, even if it appears to be set inside the mind of someone whose understanding of Britain seemingly comes entirely by way of Jilly Cooper and Richard Curtis.
This Bird Has Flown is apparently not about Hoffs at all, even though the protagonist is, like her, a Los Angeles-born Jewish singer-songwriter.
Hoffs’s heroine Jane became internationally famous after covering a song by a music Svengali called Jonesy with a sexually-charged video, then crashed with her second album.
A decade on and now on the wrong side of 30, she meets a mysterious stranger on a transatlantic flight. While staying in Britain with her loyal manager ostensibly to write songs for a comeback album and prepare for a major comeback show, romance blossoms.
The stranger — an Oxford academic and specialist in the Romantics — seems perfect to Jane.
Susanna Hoffs new book This Bird Has Flown (Photo: Bookcover)
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