I'll be very surprised if this isn't in my top 5 reads of 2018. I loved this - it took me through a lot of emotions and it's different from other books out there at the moment. I cried buckets at the end! I'd definitely look out for something else from this author. Thank you.

Living in Brixton I loved the opening chapters, I could picture myself taking a walk with Kate down the streets.

This is a light, feel good read - I have to admit I was losing interest towards the end as you know where the book is heading, that said it did end with me in tears and surely that's a sign of a good book!

3.5 stars.

Off topic - Love the book cover, very eye catching.

Thanks to NetGalley, Orion and Libby Page for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

An easy-reading, feel good novel which succeeds in two respects.

Firstly in its non-clichéd characters at different ends of the age spectrum: Rosemary at 86 is still physically and mentally activist - mourning her recently deceased husband but full of memories of their wartime courtship and lengthy marriage: Kate at 26 affected with the same loneliness and hollowness of some mid-20s which was of course recently the key theme of "Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine".

Secondly the book captures a sense of how community in Cities only really exists through shared social endeavours (in this case the Lido) and both the importance of and need for local activism to preserve those communities.

Rosemary is eighty-six and has lived in Brixton all her life. One of her most beloved constants is the local lido, where she swims regularly: 'She can see her fingers ahead of her wrinkling in the water. Her wrinkles always surprise her. Young girls don't have wrinkles. She is a young girl swimming in the morning... before heading to her job in the library - she will have to get changed quickly if she is to make it on time. Her hair will drip behind her as she makes her way up and down the shelves of books.' When the lido comes under threat from a property developer, Rosemary knows she's not only defending a place that she likes to swim, but a place that contains both her younger self and the best memories she has of her dead husband, George. She teams up with twenty-six year old Kate, a reporter on the local paper who suffers from anxiety and panic attacks, but is determined to cover the story of the lido as best she can. Through her friendship with Rosemary, Kate is drawn back into the ambit of a life she thought she'd never be able to take part in again.

The feel-good nature of Libby Page's debut, The Lido, is very on-trend, and the concept is undeniably lovely. But it's let down by its very poor writing. It's not a plotty novel - it's pretty predictable - so it needs to do more literary work to keep the reader engaged. There are good snippets on place and swimming - like the extract above - but Page's prose is otherwise consistently clunky. In the first half of the novel, the narrative occasionally darts into the heads of other Brixton residents, presumably to give a sense of the intersecting lives that meet at the lido, but Page is nowhere near good enough a writer to pull off this If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things trick. Elsewhere, the novel simply seems rushed and unedited, like the line in the second person at the beginning ('You push through the crowds') that is never referred to again.

Rosemary and Kate's friendship is at the heart of the novel, but I found both characters to be scrappy and cliched, as, indeed, is their battle with the local council. While I like the idea of a narrative that centres an older woman, Rosemary is a familiar archetype: devoted to home and family, unhappily childless, endlessly supportive of others. Much is made of the fact she's had a job all her life, but given her cohort (coming of age in the 1950s) this is hardly surprising, especially as, with no children, she would have had no reason to leave work. While avoiding spoilers, the ending of her story simply confirms that her role in the book is to support and empower others, rather than herself; hardly groundbreaking. Similarly, Kate's anxiety is an interesting twist that never goes anywhere, and in fact, I found it slightly worrying that all she seemingly needs to do is 'pull herself together' and get out more to overcome it. The negotiations with the local council become increasingly emotional and unrealistic, even though there's good potential material here about gentrification and community. A missed opportunity - two and a half stars.

A lovely story that keeps you wanting to read it in one go. Definitely recommended.

This book felt like a story for our time!
The characters are brought together by the threatened closure of the public lido and focuses on the lives of Kate and Rosemary who, despite their 60 year age difference, form a close friendship. The Lido is a lifelong companion that helps Rosemary remember the past, living through the war and her relationship with her beloved husband and campaigning to save it gives her a new sense of purpose and forces her out of her comfort zone.
Despite living and working in a busy city Kate feels very much alone but a challenge to swim in the Lido opens up new avenues and relationships in her life. The story goes back and forth in time and takes in a diverse community of people and events. It deals with the issues of planning developments, the financial pressures that influence council and business decisions, and a lack of community and communication that many people feel in a big city and the things that bring a community together. I fell for this book after a couple of chapters and it didn’t let me down as it carried on. A major event towards the end is not spelled out and it is left to the reader to realise what has happened. The author seems to have face a number of the issues portrayed by the younger lead character and I am sure this would make for a good conversation on the radio. Do read this
book, it is not a “worthy” book but the underlying themes are important for our society today and it is very engagingly written.

I found this book a bit slow paced. The scene however was set nicely and the characters were great. It was a nice book of friendship and community. It was just missing something.

Enjoyed this book, a nice gentle paced story, centred in Brixton, London. It is a tale of community and friendship.