TBR Challenge: Frances Maynard - Maggsie McNaughton's Second Chance

The first step was learning to read, but if she really wants to turn her life around, Maggsie is going to have to trust other people – and that might just be the hardest lesson she’s ever faced . . .
Small and dyslexic, with a short fuse, bad teeth, a prison record and something to prove, Marguerite McNaughton – Maggsie – doesn't need anybody or anything, thank you very much. She's more than capable of looking after herself. She’s also about to discover that everyone needs someone, sometimes. Even her. The thing about trusting others, though, is that not everyone is trustworthy...

It starts when a fellow inmate gives Maggsie reading lessons. Then she's offered a job in London as a kitchen assistant, together with supported accommodation and a colleague who seems determined to befriend Maggsie, no matter what.

At first, Maggsie is convinced nothing will change. Especially her. But maybe this time can be different? Maybe Maggsie can be different – if she can just put her previous mistakes behind her and her trust in the right people.

Comment: Another year begun and the TBR Challenge, hosted by Wendy the SuperLibrarian is back! It's easy to join! 

For January the theme is "once more with feeling" which immediately suggests a new beginning as well and with that in mind I've picked up a novel about a character having a new chance of a better life.

In this book we meet Marguerite McNaughton, who goes by Maggsie, right after she leaves prison and is placed in a follow up home so that she can start a new life, and things improve even more when she is offered a position in the kitchen of a fancy company. Maggsie hasn't had it easy with parents who didn't care, with bad decisions and being dyslexic. She believes she won't amount to anything but she does feel a little happy with this possibility, especially when she helps a man's life in her very first day and others seem to appreciate her even though her looks and speech never helped at all before. Things seem to go well enough and Maggsie even has a goal for when her year at the home is over, but someone she met in prison is also out and now has news about a third woman they met in prison, but can Maggsie really help without compromising her own life?

In 2020 I've read another book by this author and liked it, and in part that is why I had this book to read, I wanted to see what else the author could do or if it would be similar somehow. I see the author only has these two books published and now having tried both, I will say I liked the other one more than this one I've picked for the challenge. I would not say this is a bad book, but I wasn't as captivated by it as I was by the other, that's for certain.

Maggsie is the narrator of the story and she is quite quirky in the sense that she doesn't feel she deserves good things, but she has some regrets of past choices. It's not only her background and her dyslexia that have affected her behavior but she feels her looks and attitude have been shackles she can't seem to let go of, and she is prone to anger, having done anger management courses in prison too. She is the embodiment of a female prisoner who no one would believe in, but she is offered a second chance at having a better life.

Part of the interest in this story is to follow Maggsie as she goes on with her days, trying to better herself the ways she knows, for instance using the dictionary to check out words, she becomes friend of a Polish man at work and they help each other with language, visit museums that are free in their day off and Maggsie even tries other little things, such as attempting to write letters, so she can demonstrate, when it's time, that she is thinking ahead. Of course, she has one specific reason for all this...

At the same time she is in contact with another woman in prison, who helped Maggsie when she was inside, and that woman dreams of her upcoming release, but Maggsie learns, from someone else, that this friend has cancer and that is expensive to do treatments. Of course Maggsie can't give money but she is mislead into doing something she shouldn't, under the guise of it being for a "good reason". Any reader can see this as a way to tempt and test Maggsie, but at the same time I felt this was too predictable and easily avoidable if only Maggsie had asked one question or two to the right person. I think the not asking isn't that hard to believe, but at the same time painted Maggsie in a way that makes her feel less empowered. I know this was done on purpose, but it annoyed me, I confess.

The issues and the obstacles Maggsie has to overcome in order to use her second chance well aren't that difficult to process, but I could see where the author went with the limitations Maggsie felt she had. I just don't think I was properly invested in what was happening, I can't tell if by the way this was written, if by Maggsie herself who, despite understanding her problems, I've not really connected with... and the way the plot develops just didn't win me over, I felt the lack of a stronger goal. I don't mean for Maggsie, in that regard I feel that what she aimed for is commendable, but in the author's choices in how this played out. Some scenarios were just too unlikely, especially near the end.

I guess I'd say that the story could have been told in a different way and perhaps that would have made it a bit more appealing to me. I did like the emphasis on Maggsie's steps to better herself, to feel she would be worthy of accomplishing something, and I liked that she seemed to be able to make friends or at least inspire feelings of companionship in some of the people she had contact with, but something in the way the story developed just didn't fully convince me.

This said, I think the theme and some passages which illustrate the challenges of people deemed "problematic" by most of society's standards is enough to make reading this novel a satisfying experience, I feel this does offer an interesting POV of things.... but as a general fiction work I can't really say...

Grade: 6/10