Transworld Ireland
Dead? Not dead!
Yes, the heroine of Claudia Carroll’s rollicking new chicklit is Charlotte - generous, kind, loyal, and apparently dead as a doornail.
Wrecks the career path, that
The career - she always wanted to be a producer - was going nowhere. And now the late Charlotte is offered a new gig: guardian angel to James Kane, the TV producer who ditched her for screechy-voiced poodley-head Sophie. James also took Charlotte’s best programme ideas, giving her no credit, much less cash.
Charmer. Does she help him?
She does her vengeful best - this is a book for the box of chocolates and the Kleenex (for the tears of laughter). In the afterlife (rather like an old folks’ home) Charlotte realises her friends were right, James is a waste of space.
She’s got mystic powers, right?
Only James can hear her, so she has fun freaking him out at important moments: when he’s with the new mot, or he’s trying to pitch a script to a wealthy backer. The description of the backer is wickedly like certain Irish entrepreneurs, by the way.
So she only guardian-angels James?
She can give others dreams. Dreams of happy pregnancy for her wannabe-pregnant sister, who’s married to Perfect Paul and has a flock of sisters-in-law who hate her guts. Of the old boyfriend who’s just broken up with his wife for Charlotte’s internet-dating friend.
The author, isn’t she -
Yup, Nicola from the soap Fair City - now a full-time writer. So she knows the scene when she sets her hilarious story in the TV world, among producers, agents, actors and musicians.
Ooh, maybe this will be a movie?
Wouldn’t be surprised - her I Never Fancied Him Anyway, about a psychic agony aunt, was optioned by the producers of The Devil Wears Prada, and Oscar-nominated Robin Swicord is writing the screenplay.
TV3 interview with Claudia Carroll about If This is Paradise
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