The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne by Freya North

Eadie lives an unusual life in her garden city home, situated next to a cemetery. Far from being macabre and frightening, the dead are often this lonely little girl’s best friends. They provide her with somewhere to go and talk, without censorship or interruption. Her Mum and Dad work jobs outside the home, one in the day and one at night, but the rest of their time is spent at their desks in the family living room each completely engrossed in their writing work. She is an outsider at school, without friends and a target for kids like Patrick Semple. Patrick is relentless in his bullying of Eadie and it takes her a long time to find her little tribe. Her friend Josh lives with his grandfather who has a convenience shop, he’s also a concentration camp survivor. She also makes friends with Celeste, who’s lived in France and her mother, Sandrine, is an alcoholic. These are her first friends her own age, as up until now she’s mainly hung out with Michael, an elderly man who tidies the cemetery and Ross who plays the bagpipes at funerals. Eadie is feeling so settled with her life, but these three young friends are on the cusp of a huge change. All three will be going to different universities and while Eadie likes to think nothing will change, distance does have an effect on relationships and the whirlwind of Fresher’s Week will immerse them in their new lives. Will they still have time for each other? More importantly, will Eadie be able to leave the difficulties of her childhood behind her and make a life in Manchester?

Freya North beautifully inhabits the world of a young child and the fears and preoccupations that are their daily lives. It immediately swept me back to my own childhood and moments when I was afraid or felt like I didn’t belong. In my first year of primary school at age 5 we lived so rurally I had to get on a public service bus and remember when to get off and how much to pay the driver. It left me anxious about public transport ever since. I was also bullied, being poor but having a place at the local grammar school wasn’t easy and I never had the right clothes. My family also went to an evangelical church which made me different and restricted my social life. I really identified with Eadie, for feeling that her background was less than perfect. I felt Eadie’s pain. As children, if people tell us we’re odd or wrong in some way we internalise that feeling and assume they’re right. Eadie’s parents are not neglectful, but they are a very definite twosome, seemingly unaware that their only daughter is achingly lonely and suffering from immensely low self-esteem. As adults we can step back and see that her bully is probably suffering too, but children don’t realise this. As the group of friends grow towards leaving school, the changes are not easy for Eadie to cope with. What will happen to their trio as they all go their separate ways? While Josh and Celeste are excited about what’s coming, Eadie is anxious. What will Manchester hold? Will she be accepted?

I love the North West of England, my family are originally from Liverpool but my best friend is a Mancunian and we’ve spent an enormous amount of time there over the years, mainly seeing gigs from Manchester bands like Elbow. However, I grew up in the late 1980s and early 1990s and I was an indie kid. I started with The Smiths and Morrissey through to the Madchester scene and although I was too young for the halcyon days of the Hacienda I did love New Order with a passion and Bizarre Love Triangle is one of my favourite ever tracks. I felt immediately transported back to the reign of Tony Wilson, when New Order would be in residence and the club was heaving. North captures perfectly the heady days of the summer of love – the advent of Acid House and Ecstasy. Here, having made friends, Eadie finds her place of worship. She loves ‘the Hac’. She can be found on the dance floor in just a sports bra and shorts combo, able to dance all night with a raging thirst from E and a feeling of well-being to the whole world. This is before and the terrible deaths that occurred. Eadie and her friends rent a house on Hathersage Road, across the road from the amazing Baths with its art nouveau interiors. This is her home now. In fact she becomes so comfortable in her life here that she stops going home, she stops writing to friends and lives completely in the moment. It’s when things start to change that Eadie begins to struggle. Housemates have plans for their second year, placements abroad, moving back into halls and Eadie starts to fall apart. An unexpected face from the past comes back to haunt her too. After a warning from the barman at the local pub where she works, that the Hacienda is being run by drug gangs and that means violence. This leads to an unexpected blast from the past and is the catalyst for a breakdown. Eadie finds herself unable to complete work and even starts to question whether to stay at university. With her housemates making different plans for next year, Eadie can feel the foundations of her life shaking.

Freya North captures perfectly how secrets and traumatic experiences can follow us through life. If left unaddressed, our life is like a wall with a fault in it’s foundations. It can only be fixed by removing the upper layers until you reach and remedy the original fault. Eadie has covered her trauma over with many different layers: her friendships with the residents of the cemetery; alcohol and E; the Hacienda and acid house. I felt something with Eadie’s story, because of my own recent experiences with old friends. We can experience so much difficulty and pain in life that we feel far removed from those friends we’ve had in the past, but often they’re still there, just waiting for a sign that they can help or support us. I loved Eadie’s relationship with Kip, which isn’t perfect but the love is all the more real for those imperfections. His love is shown in actions rather than words and is stretched to it’s limits at times. Eadie is one of those people who takes a long time to work out who she is and what she wants to do in life, that is until she takes care of her unfinished business and then she flies.

Out now from Mountain Leopard Press

Meet the Author

I’m the author of 15 bestselling novels and am so excited to bring you my 16th novel: THE UNFINISHED BUSINESS OF EADIE BROWNE. I know you can read the blurb here – but I wanted to tell you how important and personal this book is to me… Much of it was drawn from my own memories of leaving home for Manchester Uni in the late 80s and remembering what that FELT like. Also, I live outside Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire – and I became interested in the visionary ethos of the Garden City movement. Because lockdown cancelled all the lovely centenary celebrations planned for Welwyn Garden City, this novel also serves as my tribute to the town and its Founder. I hope you’ll enjoy the novel – unlike Little Wing, my previous novel which flew out of me in 4 months flat, I really toiled over Eadie Browne; writing and rewriting and REWRITING until I was confident I’d written my best book yet… this much I owe to you, my lovely readers.

2021 marked the 25th anniversary of the publication of my first novel Sally! My 15th novel Little Wing was written during the first lockdown. Set partly in the Outer Hebrides and interweaving the secrets and lies of two families over two time frames – it was a joy to research and write and certainly kept me sane during the Pandemic. I’ve always been focussed on a sense of place being a key feature of my writing – settings being a leading character, not merely a backdrop. Previous locations have included North Norfolk, British Columbia, Derbyshire, Vermont, France, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall… I’m an avid reader too – and the novels of Barbara Trapido, Jane Gardam, Rose Tremain and Mary Wesley inspired me to write. I hope you enjoy my books – please keep in touch via my website, Facebook, Twitter and Insta! Happy Reading! Sign up for my newsletter (via my website)