The Bluebird Cafe

The Bluebird Café ‘turns contemporary urban life into a magical confection… with a brightness, whimsy and humour that set it apart’ (Literary Review). A novel about finding love in a world of wheelie bins, corner shops and letters to The Council.

John Vir owns a newsagent in Southampton – the only shop that still stocks Space Dust along with packets of petrified celery soup, drosophila-studded fruit and boxes of henna. Lucy and Paul are his favourite customers – they live across the road above Snooke’s Electrical Stores, soon to become the Bluebird Café. Stencilling blue doves below the picture rails and buying stripped-pine chairs from the Oxfam furniture store, Lucy works in the newly opened café whilst Paul spends his time at the Badger Centre as a volunteer. Meanwhile John Vir thinks of little else but Lucy and invites her to the cash ‘n’ carry, hoping of course, that it will be a prelude to something more exciting, for them both.

‘Rebecca Smith has a quirky, offbeat view of life… her freshness and zest are immensely appealing. She has plenty of good-humoured comedy up her sleeve, a grasp of dialogue, and an eagle eye for the absurd.’
– Daily Mail.

‘Smith makes an impressively convincing case for the argument that small is beautiful in this exquisitely and wittily observed portrait of homely ambition and the search for love.’
– The Times

‘Charming, funny, witty and romantic.’
– Esther Freud