Good Vibrations is perhaps best described as a work of creative non-fiction, the story of Margaret Halliday’s time as a single mother in Glasgow and Edinburgh during the 1960s.
The author tells her story with direct and unusually objective honesty. Â In fact, she is not kind to herself, and doesn’t attempt to present herself as the intelligent women that her later career demonstrates. After a number of risky sexual adventures she becomes pregnant and plans to have the baby adopted. But once he is born, she cannot bear to part with him. Singlemindedly she decides to sue the father for a lump sum which she uses to purchase a flat, enabling her to let a room to another single mother and go back to college.
Written in the first person, it isn’t a long novel but serves to illustrate the sort of prejudices that single mothers experienced during this period. From being asked to leave her college course to the difficulties of finding work or accommodation she presents a picture of an unsympathetic world. Yet through her determination, she goes on to become a university lecturer in Edinburgh and in Turkey and to travel  to India and New Zealand. It’s a feel good story of just what you can achieve if you don’t take no for an answer.
Good Vibrations is available in print and kindle editions from Amazon.
You kindly reviewed Good Vibrations for me. Now I’ve published WWOOFing North and South, about my experience of working on organic farms in Scotland and New Zealand. I wonder if you would review this one?
Thanks
Margaret Halliday