The School Gate Survival Guide By Kerry Fisher – Review And Extract

[amazon_link id=”0007570236″ target=”_blank” ][/amazon_link]’The School Gate Survival Guide’ is the latest book by Kerry Fisher.

Feisty Maia Etxeleku is a cleaner for ladies who lunch. She spends her life wiping up spilt Sauvignon and hoovering around handbags before rushing back home to skivvy after her children’s feckless father on an estate where survival depends on your ability to look the other way. But an unusual inheritance catapults her into a different world where no child can survive without organic apricots and Kumon maths classes – and no woman can contemplate a week without Pilates and pedicures. As she blunders through a middle class minefield, dashing from coffee mornings to her mops and buckets, she is drawn to the one man who can help her family fit in. But is his interest in her purely professional or will her modern My Fair Lady experiment end in disaster?

This book is hailed as the modern day ‘My Fair Lady’ and I can certainly agree with that statement.

In this story, our leading lady Maia Etxeleku is struggling to get by, with a lazy no-good partner, she finds it hard to make ends meet, living off the few measly pounds she makes from her cleaning jobs, she aspires to make a better life for her two children, inquisitive and happy go lucky Harley and sulky Bronte. But her dreams come true, when an ex-employer leaves her money on the condition that she uses it for Harley and Bronte’s education. So she moves her children to the posh school on the edge of town and finds herself subject to gossip, drama and new friends at the school gate.

I enjoyed this book and thought it made for quite humorous and lighthearted reading. Kerry has written a book with a leading character that you feel a genuine connection with. From the first page, we empathise with Maia stuck in a relationship where there is no love, only resentment and unhappiness. We see how far Maia’s relationship with Colin has soured. Through her narrative, we read how lowly she regards him and it’s hard not to agree with her since he isn’t the most likeable character, constantly complaining and belittling her, the only time we see a sense of affection with him is when he is with the children. Maia, is a courageous and admirable character, putting her children before herself, she works hard to provide for her family. For such a likeable character, Maia lacks confidence and fails to see what people around her see, convinced that she’s going nowhere, she is unaware of the fact that she has caught the eye of Harley’s handsome teacher Mr Peters, a charming and strong man, who would love to sweep in and save Maia from a life of poverty. But as Maia, begins to settle in with the yummy mummy’s of the school, she develops a new friendship with Clover, a deliciously eccentric characters who provides Maia with a welcome shoulder when things become tough.

A heartwarming and entertaining tale, ‘The School Gate Survival Guide’ is a coming of age rag to riches story that will have you giggling and smiling throughout. I loved it.

Here’s a little taster of first chapter of the book to wet your appetite. Happy reading!

Chaper One

‘Solicitor? Is something missing?’ I said, panicking. Surely they weren’t trying to track down the parrot head bookends that the old lady had given me. I didn’t even like them. In my experience, solicitors weren’t people who wanted to see you. They were people who were instructed to see you.

Middle-aged men in too tight shirts, who turned up at police stations when everyone else was in bed to work on the pathetic little stories of drug addicts, drunkards and the bog standard low life that hung around our estate. The sort of men who’d saved Colin’s sorry little arse on more than one occasion.

‘No, Mrs Etxeleku. No, of course not, nothing like that. I believe there was something in the professor’s will which Mr Harrison would like to discuss with you.’

It was only after I’d put the phone down that the numbness started to fall away. My teeth were chattering. I pulled on the tracksuit bottoms Colin had left on a chair and grabbed my long cardigan, still damp, from the clothes airer. In films you see people burst into tears, sobbing, ‘I can’t believe she’s gone.’ But I started yelling. ‘Ghastly. Bad. Atrocious. Horrendous. Horrible. Hateful.

Crap.’ That was one of the professor’s little games, getting me to think of different words to mean the same thing. When I got to ‘crap’, I banged on the window at the mad git next door who was flicking his terrier’s turds through the broken fence again. He appeared to be aiming for our paddling pool, left out since the summer, which had now become a slimy green home to water boatmen and other wildlife. He waved his shovel at me and smiled like a loon.

You can buy [amazon_link id=”0007570236″ target=”_blank” ]The School Gate Survival Guide from Amazon [/amazon_link] and will be available to buy from good booshops from 11th September 2014.