Penny is happy in her life with her mam and hanging out with her best friends Matt and Kitty. They do
everything together, spending time playing Fifa, enjoying sausage sandwiches at Matt’s home with his grandparents, and flinging Kitty’s frisbee in the back garden of their home they all call ‘The Flats”.
The Flats was once a grand mansion built for a daughter of a honey empire. Now it has been split into small flats on several floors. The caretaker of the building never does any repairs, ignores the pleas of the tenants about their windows that won’t open, and their coughs that have developed from the ever increasing spread of mould along their walls.
Now the mould can’t be left at home, as it’s smell seeps into the tenants clothes and belongings. Penny, Matt and Kitty are teased then ostracized at school for their damp odour. The rats have increased too, and the caretaker’s lazy solution poisons the neighbour’s cat.
The neighbour is elderly Violet Fitzsimons, thought to be a crazed killer by the local kids, with meat hook hands, man-traps in the back yard and a murder cellar. In actual fact she is also a daughter of the local honey empire, except her mansion is well cared for and intact. Penny learns this after she finds the sick cat and rushes it over to her owner.
Penny sees a completely different way of life. The air is fresh. The food is plentiful. Violet’s wonderful stories of her school years at Pearlbourne Academy for Exceptional Girls are a stark contrast to her own school where the students don’t listen and the teachers don’t care. Violet plays beautiful music on her piano and completely enraptured, Penny soon begins lessons.
These lessons are a spark of a dream Penny builds for herself. She is top of her class, but wants to learn so much more. More like Pearlbourne offers. The more she yearns, the more her real life pulls her down – until the unimaginable happens. One morning there is no food in their tiny flat, so Penny plans to spend some of her window cleaning money on the basics until her mam’s payday – only to find MUCH more in her bank account than her job money.
Can it really be real? Is this her chance to escape the mould, the despondent teachers and constant money worries. Penny is transformed into Lola Nolan-Fitzsimons.
Like all of Sarah Moore Fitzgerald titles, All the Money in the World caught me quickly and held on until the end. It’s not action-packed, full of fire or fantasy, but IS an enjoyable tale told by a girl who wants more for her life, her friends and her mam.
The story thread of misconception about a reclusive neighbour is a common one, but always believable due to children’s imaginations and also as the world becomes more insular, neighbours often being last on any list of concerns.
Although the theme of being yourself was a lesson Penny had to learn, and an obvious thread in the story, the tension as Penny reinvented herself, the passion as she strived to be the best she could be, and keeping her true self hidden – were all page turners.
There was mystery – why had Violet vanished? There were possibilities beyond anyone’s wildest dreams (what would YOU do with that much money?) and careful secrets to be wrangled and kept.
A wonderful combination of old and new, rich and poor, truth and secrets, with music pinning it all together.
Author – Sarah Moore Fitzgerald
Age – 10+
(2021, Blended Family, Friendship, Growing up, Music, Mystery, Peer Pressure, Poverty, School, Secret, Boarding School, Different Identity, Keeping up Appearances, Sudden Wealth, Guilty Secret, Bettering yourself, Yearning for more than dealt, Piano, Practice, Striving to do better)