The last time I wrote a book review was in the mid-1990s and Mrs Gunter was my English teacher at Fairwater Comprehensive School.
I hope she doesn’t take her red pen to these 526 words that were written on a laptop a few days ago while a passenger in a car driving home from Plymouth. The weird situation is my excuse for any spelling, grammar or punctuation errors.
A novel set in Cwmbran was always going to grab my attention. When an email about Dale Bradford’s ‘The Time-Travelling Estate Agent‘ appeared in my inbox, I placed an order.
The plot revolves around Eric, a town centre estate agent, and his opportunities to return to a scorching hot day in Cwmbran during the summer of 1976; the best – and worst – day of his life.
I enjoyed it for two reasons. The first is obvious. Reading about locations in Cwmbran, the boating lake is a key spot in the book, and other places gave me a chance to try and guess what actual pub, hotel and streets the fictional names Dale gave them were referring to. There were lots of clues and I enjoyed using local knowledge to try and work them out.
Fingers crossed, I’m meeting the author soon and will see if he’ll spill the beans in exchange for a coffee.
The second is the plot. This must be the first time an estate agent is the hero in a story. I liked Eric, then I disliked him, then I loved him, and this swapped and changed several times. I read it as an ebook and didn’t track how many ‘pages’ I’d read. At one point I thought ‘Ah, I know where this is going, X will do this, Y will say that, and Z will happen’ and everyone will live happily ever after.
I got it wrong.
Even as I started reading the last ‘ten per cent’ (ebook talk) of the book I still couldn’t predict how Eric would use his iPhone and knowledge for one last trip to the 1970s.
If you remember the 70s, or you’ve heard your parents/ grandparents talk about this decade, this book is a good way to get an insight into the good and bad of day-to-day life through relieving 3 July 1976 from all sorts of angles. The price of drinks, cars, the lack of refrigerators in shops, and a world where the idea of buying a sandwich from a shop would be met with laughter, are all thrown into the mix.
It’s a great read written by a local author with a bonus for us who know Cwmbran to guess where the fictional names given to actual local spots are located.
In 2021 I spotted Mrs Gunter’s name underneath a letter in a national newspaper. In a strange coincidence a few days later I saw her walking along a street in Cwmbran and stopped my car to jump out to tell her I’d read it.
Mrs Gunter, if you read (or mark) this review please remember I wrote every word while cramped in a car. I’m also sure you said the rules of English were there to be broken. Apologies if you didn’t and I’ve just libelled you.
Buy the book
The Time-Travelling Estate Agent is available as ebook, paperback or hardback.