East Renfrewshire ~ Book Blog

OHagan: Personality

Maria Tambini is a 13-year-old girl with an amazing singing voice. Growing up above her mother’s chip shop on the Scottish island of Bute, living at the centre of her family’s dream of fame, Maria is an extraordinary girl making ready to escape the ordinary life.

We first meet her amidst the faded grandeur of the seaside resort of Rothesay, with the Argyll hills and the Eighties in front of her, and behind her a long shadow: the secret story of her Italian-immigrant family. When Maria wins a national TV talent show she is taken to London and becomes an instant star of what used to be called light entertainment; she sings with Dean Martin and tours America, can fill the London Palladium, yet all the while ‘the girl with the giant voice’ is losing herself in fame and begins a private war against her own body. Maria becomes a living exhibit in the modern drama of celebrity: is it possible that she can be saved by love? Or is she to be consumed by an obsessive culture, by family lies and her number one fan?

Check availability on East Renfrewshire Libraries’ catalogue.

Gale: Notes from an Exhibition

When troubled artist Rachel Kelly dies raving in her attic studio in Penzance, her saintly husband and adult children have more than the usual mess to clear up. She leaves behind her paintings of genius - but she leaves also a legacy of secrets and emotional damage it will take months to unravel.