Friday, February 26, 2016

a new fan

Linda wrote to me, "There were so many little similarities in the book that I shared - from the TV shows we watched, to disdain for the Dave Clark Five,  to being French kissed for the first time (one gets used to it a few years later!) Thank you for writing this book, Beth….it took me on one hell of a nostalgic ride."

All My Loving: Coming of Age with Paul McCartney in Paris

 
by 
12493351
's review
Feb 25, 16

really liked it
Read from February 10 to 24, 2016

This book was almost like living in a parallel universe with the author. As teenage Beatles fans, author Beth Kaplan and I hold some remarkable similarities. We both loved Paul McCartney, were both daughters of Brit war brides who came to North America -- my mum married a Canadian soldier and ended up in New Brunswick, Beth's mother married a U.S. soldier and ended up living in Halifax, N.S. where her dad taught at Dalhousie U. The father figure made the mother figure cry a lot and was judgmental of the daughter. The family even had a Morris Minor car...which was our first car in Canada. (Piece of merde that it was). The pages are filled with all the teenage angst of unrequited love, actually seeing The Beatles for the first time in person (I flew from Saint John to Toronto for the concert in 1966), the thrill of being at a live concert, sharing magazines and records with girlfriends and so on. A time of first kisses, mixed feelings, thinking you are not popular or might be ugly, and all the other stuff that goes with being a teenage girl who has her swoon-on for a dishy guy....in this case Paul McCartney. At one point, Beth's family moved to France for a year and she had to adapt to life in the world of French academia. I moved schools too - between the UK and Canada, not quite as exotic. Memories of buying the first Beatles album, clipping every item out of the newspaper that mentioned their names, writing fantasy letters to the favorite Beatle (so many girls really did that). I actually wasn't one of those...instead I tried to write like John Lennon from his book In His Own Write. Kaplan's description of her teen life with Paul McCartney as the soundtrack was a book I could not put down, because I almost felt as if I had written it! Or should have....if I wasn't so lazy.
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