BOOK BLOG - Geraldine by Andrea Thompson

Hello, hello. This is the SECOND of my book blogs. Yes, I have not yet finished my first one, but I got distracted and started reading another book that I wanted to share with you all, so here we are. 

29/05/2025 

I started reading Geraldine yesterday, and have already read some 40% of the book! I’m really enjoying it so far. The book follows the life of Geraldine, a young girl from England as she grows up, from a small town in the UK to Kitwe in Zambia, boarding school, and more (I leave it at more simply because I haven’t read up to there yet!).

Andrea Thompson’s writing is very good, it has a very evocative quality, builds the places up so well, you can smell the cigarette smoke in Geraldine’s house, feel the grass of the school grounds as she trudges along, the warmth of the heater as she sits next to it listening to her cassettes. It’s a snapshot into not only the life of Geraldine, but it paints a picture of the evolution of punk, and Geraldine’s introduction to it and her own growth through music. 

I really enjoy books like this, that move slowly through a character’s life without a traditional plot structure, it feels like an exploration of a life rather than a presentation of events. Geraldine does this really quite well, and doesn’t fall into the trap that leads to this sort of approach feeling directionless or boring. Even though the book came out this year, it has a quality to it (probably due to the fact that it is set in the 70s and 80s, and works so well in creating clear settings) that feels much older. A very good read so far, and I may well only have a few more updates before I’ll have finished it!

16/06/2025

A new entry! I’m near to the end of the book now, but not yet finished. I find the recounts of Geraldine’s adolescence in England to be fantastic, and as I have spoken about before, beautifully visual and evocative of a clear time and place. I can really feel the places conjured in the writing. As Geraldine makes her way to Australia, this feeling (for the most part), continues. 

Geraldine’s involvement in activism and protest at this point in the story comes naturally and I very much enjoy the role it takes in the story here. However, I also find some of the moments as this aspect of Geraldine’s character progresses to be jarringly modern and very much out of place. The most obvious of these moments being a conversation between Geraldine and another character which supposedly takes place in the late 80s, where the word “transphobic” is used - a word that wasn’t found written until the early 90s and I don’t think would have spread orally all the way to Australia by that point in time (we are, after all, known for being behind the times down here). Personally I found it dissatisfying to have a book that otherwise captures and transmits a point in time so well to have such jarring moments. As someone who has read a lot of queer nonfiction written in this time period, the entire approach to gender and sexuality in this book just doesn’t match anything I’ve read from that period, and it just took me out of the story.

However, this does not mean the book is, in its entirety, a flop! I have really quite enjoyed it so far, and to be entirely honest this is a very nitpicky issue to find and probably not something most people would be annoyed with. Keep an eye out for my next post about Geraldine, as it will likely be the last!

I finished Geraldine about a week ago and forgot to post an update. Whoops! Here are my overall thoughts.

The book was pretty fun, and I really did enjoy it, but I think the second half felt really rushed in comparison to the way the first was paced. The beginning was slow, natural, and wonderfully detailed, and really felt like it moved in a way that fitted and made sense with the story, but once Geraldine makes her way to Australia everything gets too fast and a bit muddled, including the stuff with her friend’s band and their fame. It kind of detracts from how great the first half of the book is. I wish the second half just slowed down a little more and took its time in the way the first half did. 

I think it may also fix some of the issues with the way Geraldine’s activism fits into the story. While it doesn’t necessarily come out of nowhere, it is almost a little stilted in its inclusion and could maybe be a little more gradual or well-developed which would be improved by the whole second half just slowing down a little bit.

Beyond these pacing issues though, like I said, Geraldine is a fun read and something I would recommend for anyone with an interest in any sort of vaguely realistic queer-punk-history fiction novel. It really is enjoyable and I do hope Andrea Thompson puts some more books out because her writing style is super engaging and really fantastic.

And thanks to you, dear reader, for reading my whole blog! If you read this book, let me know your thoughts! If you haven’t read this book, let me know your thoughts anyways! Let me know what you think of my blog and what I had to say - maybe you agree, maybe you don’t. Anyways I would love to hear what you have to say.