Four Minutes to Save a Life by Anna Stuart: Thought-provoking and uplifting, this is the ideal book to banish those winter blues… and renew your faith in human nature - book review -

Supermarket delivery man Charlie Sparrow is not the only troubled soul on his regular round…

Determined to make amends for a secret in his past, Charlie wants to help his customers, but can you really reach out to strangers when your time slot with each of them is limited to four minutes per visit?

At a time when kindness and compassion are increasingly being seen as a benign ‘weapon’ to counter intemperance and intolerance on all sides of the political and social divide, Anna Stuart brings us a moving, feel-good read about love, loneliness, friendship and forgiveness.

After a collection of popular historical novels under the pseudonym Joanna Courtney, Stuart has turned her talents to some acutely observant, real-life tales and after the success of last year’s Bonnie and Stan, a poignant romance set in both the present day and Sixties Liverpool, she is back with another emotional rollercoaster.

Charlie is literally having a bonfire of his past. He can’t change it but he can at least ‘burn it away, scrape it clear, wipe the board’ and rise up, if not phoenix-like, at least like ‘a little sparrow.’

So here he is on his first day in his new ‘safe’ job as a delivery driver for Turner’s Super Supermarkets and checking in under the name Charlie Sparrow, determined to make a success of it even if his family are all set for him to fail.

What he hadn’t expected was to be told that he has ‘only four minutes per house’ even though he quickly discovers that he is the only person some of his customers see during the whole day, and sometimes a whole week.

Charlie’s boss tells him he’s a driver, not a social worker but there are some very lonely residents on his Hope Row drop-off who deserve far more than four minutes of his time, and he sets out to make amends for painful events in his own past.

Widower Vik Varma regrets not retiring earlier after the sudden death of his beloved wife. He misses her every day so fills the time cooking up delicious curries and chatting to his ancient tortoise, and hoping that his son, who is always very busy, will spare the time to visit him.

Lonely Ruth Madison, who has never recovered from her husband walking out on her, spends her days mending anything electrical, doing jigsaws and drinking vodka. Her life has been reduced to ‘a gaping hole where once her family had been.’

And Greg Sutton, once a promising ecological researcher, is now confined to a wheelchair after a devastating industrial accident and feels trapped in his house. He broods constantly and can’t stop remembering the handsome, successful man he used to be.

Now the Hope Row residents have been taken under Charlie’s wing. By hook or by crook, he will draw them out of their shells and back into the world. But will his helping hand make everything worse?

Four Minutes to Save a Life tackles serious contemporary issues like depression, mental health, alcoholism and the power of social media with a light touch, a warm heart, and plenty of searing psychological insight.

As the insecurities, anxieties and sense of isolation and disconnection of each of Charlie’s customers are slowly exposed, we learn of the bereavements, broken relationships and life-changing events that have left them struggling to cope.

Charlie – who has his own demons to battle – becomes the caring catalyst for a new way of looking at life; the realisation that community, friendship, shared troubles, new hope and acceptance are the key to both happiness and redemption.

Dark moments of tear-jerking intensity – whether through grief, pain or sheer loneliness – jostle comfortably with laugh-out-loud one-liners and dramatic revelations as Charlie, Vik, Greg and Ruth search desperately for their elusive happy ending.

Thought-provoking and uplifting, this is the ideal book to banish those winter blues… and renew your faith in human nature.

(Trapeze, paperback, £8.99)