The Good Turn

This story has an excellent starting premise. Josephine has some positive thoughts about doing something meaningful and some negative thoughts about the impending arrival of a baby brother. Her parents haven’t decided on a name for him yet and this sets Josephine off googling her own name, looking for a namesake to inspire her. She finds some black heroines: Josephine Baker naturally, but Josie doesn’t fancy the banana skirt; and also, Josephine Holloway, the founder of a black Girl Scout troop in Tennessee in the 1930s, a woman who overcame many obstacles to make a contribution to society. Josephine, from Luton, decides to do something similar, and so The Copseys is born, named after the close in which she lives: a group with its own aims to be helpful and upstanding, and with “pledges, badges, our code”. Josie quickly enlists new friend Margot and a rather more reluctant Wesley and they soon find a real opportunity to do a good deed when they discover an old couple hiding out in the local derelict car factory. There is so much to enjoy in this tale. Josephine herself is believable, likeable and just too much sometimes. Margot and Wesley are much more than supporting acts, with Wesley, in particular, having something important and challenging to say to Josephine at one point.  The interplay between the friends is perceptive, witty and warm, the dialogue fizzes, and Jackson manages to work in some history of unionism in the car industry and the Windrush scandal without missing a beat. Perhaps most of the adults are a little too forbearing and understanding but that’s balanced by a devious and vicious villain, who must be the English cousin of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons.