A journalist fakes a heart-warming story, only to find an unexpected truth behind her creation - a sharp and poignant comedy of errors
On Hampstead Heath is
a deliciously romantic comedy of misunderstandings and misbehaviour - I loved it
With
On Hampstead Heath, Marika Cobbold has rebooted the Hampstead Novel for the 21st century. A
delightful novel
A
heart-warming and at times
hilarious tale about truth and honesty in this treacherous age of social media
A
brilliant and
brave take on fake news and its fallout
Clever and funny with a splinter of melancholy running through it. It's a
superb read
Few writers balance darkness and light as well as CobboldOn Hampstead Heath was so refreshing and unexpectedly needed, like feeling the sun on your face in winter.
Funny, astute, and aching in all the right ways, I was utterly charmed.
Marika Cobbold's look on life is unique
On Hampstead Heath is exactly what is needed at this time. A romantic story tempered with a sharp wit and written with knowledge and love of place in which it's set
An absolute little gem of a book,
On Hampstead Heath is
entertaining, thought-provoking and extremely wittyA
fabulous read. It's
wise and perceptive, honest and wittyBrilliant and
funny and
darkly surprising Marika Cobbold was born with newspaper ink flowing through her veins. She used to visit her father and grandfather at their offices at the Gothenburg-Post, the Swedish broadsheet her grandfather had rescued from oblivion decades earlier.
At home, when Marika wasn't reading, she listened as the grown-ups around her discussed the issues of the day, and to the stories told by her mother and great aunt, who was a writer.
She left Sweden for England when she was nineteen, with vague plans of studying law, but eventually what her grandfather called "the family curse" caught up with her, and some years later she wrote her first novel, Guppies For Tea. She has been writing ever since.