SIXTY SUMMERS by Amanda Hampson

It is a rite of passage if you are from NZ or Australia that at some stage in your twenties (generally) you undertake your 'OE' - short for overseas experience. In the not too distant past this involved 2 years minimum based in the UK, usually London, working a badly paid job, co-habitating in squalid dumps with numerous other compatriots, living frugally, all with the aim of saving money to do the next bit of travel. Nowadays this still happens, not necessarily in London, but it still involves leaving home at a young age, alone, no organised job or income stream, but with that marvellous optimism of youth, and the world famous 'she'll be right' attitude.

So what do you think when you look back on it some forty years later as the three women in this novel do? Was this the best time of your life ever?  Do you look back fondly on your youthful self, the escapades you got up to, the lucky escapes you had. Would you do it again if you could?

Rosa, Fran and Maggie first met some forty years ago in London, each on her OE, immediately becoming the best of friends - travelling together, flatting together, picking up the pieces for each other - the best times of their lives.  Now they are approaching 60, their lives are quite different from those free-wheeling carefree days, much like what it has done for all  of us. Things have not panned out in the ways they dreamed of and planned those years ago. Still very close they all realise they need to escape for a bit from their families and work, rediscover some meaning in their lives, and so decide to meet in London where Fran still lives not very happily, and re-enact the journey through Europe that they made all those years ago.

Naturally things don't go to plan on their road trip, it is hard for each of them to escape their home lives with things at home unfolding differently because they aren't there to keep the reins under control. But as on all road trips, the challenges and 40 years of differences between the three friends are all overcome. They each find some magic to enable them to return to and rearrange their lives more satisfactorily. Every one is a winner.

This is engaging, fun to read. We can all identify with each of these women - our youthful dreams overtaken by the realities of life; is 60 to old to start again; the freedom of a road trip. It's a good story, very enjoyable, and these women are very real, which of course makes us like them even more.