The Brambled Path Of Life

Mrs Clutterbuck’s Christmas Emporium by Nicola May is the most charming contemporary Christmas novel that will warm your heart and make you smile, whilst filling you with festive cheer and love.

 This is a book about life and community. Life comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. The novel is full of different personalities, all with huge hearts, full of love. People may not always get it right, but they try to help and their hearts are in the right place.

A rift of twenty-seven-years sees Mrs Clutterbuck heading home after hearing that her twin sister has up and left, and someone needs to be responsible for their elderly mum in a home with dementia. What starts out as a duty, soon becomes love as Mrs Clutterbuck finds out where she belongs. “She had spent twenty years making sure nobody got close enough to hurt her by leaving.” Living a life in isolation was a lonely life.

Mrs Clutterbuck has been a hoarder, buying and selling antiques or anything that takes her fancy. Stuff has been the substitute for people in her life. “Maybe we weren’t supposed to measure a life by the number of possessions we accumulated along the way. Perhaps it was the memories that mattered. The people we’d loved.” People are the greatest treasure.

A little shop had been bought by her mother and sister. Mrs Clutterbuck decides that her treasures need homes, and sets about opening her Christmas Emporium. Here, people are the treasures too. There is community and there is love.