Full disclosure to start us off; I’ve read both of Tina Baker’s previous novels and absolutely loved both of them, so I was expecting great things from her third novel – the intriguingly titled ‘Make Me Clean’ and thankfully, I was not disappointed.
A decade ago, Maria escaped her previous life and became a cleaner in London for a variety of different people with different circumstances and personalities. Some are kind and friendly, others are unpleasant and snobby and don’t really give her the time of day. Then there’s Brian who is struggling with a bullying, homophobic manager and likes Elsie to listen to his tribulations, and Balogan, a huge and intimidating nightclub owner and man of very few words who suffers with some dreadfully loud and inconsiderate neighbours across the corridor from his penthouse apartment.
Maria takes great pride in her work and has a very strong work ethic – she’s usually found traipsing across town getting from job to job or falling into bed in the early hours, exhausted. Though she tries to keep herself to herself, through chance encounters she keeps finding out, or getting involved in things she shouldn’t, and it’s hard for her not to get more involved than she feels wants to. One of these encounters with Balogan is almost heart-stopping – I think I held my breath while I read through the whole paragraph.
One of Maria’s favourite clients is Elsie, an elderly lady who lives with several cats and her awful, abusive husband. Sadly, Elsie is slipping slowly into the grip of ever-worsening dementia and Maria is becoming increasingly attached and involved in her care. Something about the old woman calls out to Maria and before long she’s become the old lady’s self-styled protector, cleaning out not only Elsie’s house, but also her life. Now she just has to hope the evidence keeps itself contained and that no-one starts to question why the “man” of the house is never at home and why that rose patch in the garden has suddenly started to look rather disturbed. When Elsie’s distant son starts to get more involved in her situation and starts talking about moving his Mum into a care home, getting rid of the cats and selling the house, Maria is at her wits end and things take a further dark turn: if the house is sold then someone might dig up that garden and well, no-one needs that kind of hassle do they? It’s at this point that you start to wonder what the reasons were that led her Maria to flee her old life in the first place…
Make Me Clean is another triumph for Tina Baker. As the child of a window cleaner and a fairground traveller, her lived experience of working class people, often looked down upon whilst just trying to keep their heads above water, lends a realism to her writing that makes her characters so believable, so gritty and real. Her protagonists are shades of grey – they’re not bad people, but they do very, very bad things – so why do I still find myself rooting for them?
If you’ve ever come across Tina on TV or social media you’ll already know that she’s a laugh-out-loud funny woman, and this dark humour shines through the characters she writes, even when they haven’t got very much to laugh about. The ability to get inside the mind of her characters is one of the things I have loved in each of Tina’s books; her observational skills are second to none and when combined with the poignancy of her prose she translates that into a pathway to the sweet spot in your empathy gland, plunges the knife in and twists it a few times. Just like her best characters do, in fact. A solid 5 out of 5.
5/5
Released by Viper Books in Feb 2023.
About the Author: Tina Baker
Tina Baker, the daughter of a window cleaner and fairground traveller, worked as a journalist and broadcaster for thirty years and is probably best known as a television critic for the BBC and GMTV. After so many hours watching soaps gave her a widescreen bum, she got off it and won Celebrity Fit Club. She now avoids writing-induced DVT by working as a Fitness Instructor.
Tina’s bestselling novels include “Call Me Mummy” and “Nasty Little Cuts”. “Make Me Clean’ is her third novel.
Visit her website here: http://www.tinabaker.co.uk
Urban Bookworm 