‘Away With The Penguins’ was a pleasure to read. It turned out to be more than a feel-good, happy-ever-after novel about the self-made redemption of an isolated and emotionally locked-down octogenarian (although it was all those things).

It made me smile as I knew it would but more in rueful recognition of traits, habits and preferences that I share with the main character rather than because of anything comic in the story. It was quietly and skilfully uplifting, letting even an old cynic like me believe, at least for a moment, in the power of hope and the possibility of happy endings.

Yet the most memorable things about the book were things I hadn’t expected: a woman so clearly and realistically drawn that I believed in her completely and the sadness that I felt by being immersed in a past filled with so much grief.

‘Away With The Penguins‘ is a set of interlocking first-person accounts that are written with such a light, gentle hand that it was only in retrospect that I could see how different, and how perfectly pitched, the ‘voices’ of Veronica in her eighties, Veronica’s grandson and Veronica in her teens were. This effect was amplified in the audiobook by having different narrators for each of these three voices.

I liked that the plot had just enough surprises that although I thought I could see where everything was going, I wasn’t always right and even when I was, I couldn’t see how the characters would get there.

For me, the best part of the book was getting to know and like Veronica. I got to know her first as a woman in her eighties who has come to terms with the knowledge that most of her life is behind her. Veronica resonated with me because she enjoys her solitude, she’s strong-willed and she lives on her own terms with only a smidgen of self-delusion. I understood her need for solitude and her acceptance that most people who meet her dislike her and I relished her joy at seeing the penguins up close for the first time. At first, I admired her discipline in keeping her past in the past as much as she could. I misread it as a focus on the present. Then the locked box appeared and I realised that she had literally locked away things that she could not bear to remember and I knew I wouldn’t see her clearly until I knew what those things were.

In contrast to Veronica, I really disliked her grandson. The part of me that likes to pretend that I’m open-minded and non-judgemental (OK, it’s a small, weak part of me that the rest of me snorts at derisively) wanted to make allowances for him given his foster-care background and his abandonment issues and his recent break-up with his girlfriend but most of me was turned off by his bliss-out-on-weed response to pressure. It’s a sign of Hazel Prior’s skill at building empathy that he grew on me… a little… eventually.

Meeting teenage Veronica was an experience that changed the whole novel, grounding it and making it real. Her voice was clear, credible and full of the confidence and energy of youth. She was easy to believe in and even easier to like, which made everything that happened to her so much worse.

I think it was a brave decision to add a first-hand account of young Veronica’s life. It’s not at all what I’d expect in a feel-good book. It’s vivid and sad. I liked that Hazel Prior used that passage, told as diary entries, not only to give the present-day Veronica context but also to revitalise Veronica herself.

The only thing that didn’t work for me was the epilogue. If I’d been the editor, I’d have advised dropping it. It was way too sugar-coated and not closely enough linked to the main story.

‘Away With The Penguins‘ was a fun feel-good read. A little too happily ever after perhaps but still well grounded and well, earning four feel-good penguin-inspired stars.