Profile: Tamlin Alberts

 Tamlin Alberts:

Upon meeting Tamlin one would most certainly be under the impression that she does not come out much and that she just keeps to herself. However, that is totally the opposite of this colorful character. One of the main interests in her life is most certainly her passion for music. She believes that music has the ability to change your day or even your life. She says: “I know it sounds a bit dramatic, but that’s the way I see it.” Tamlin is the type of girl that tends to hide behind her music sheets. She confides in her music by composing lyrics which best describes her life at that particular moment. Music gets her through most of the obstacles with which she is faced.

Tamlin spends most of her spare time with family and friends. She loves bonding with her piano, playstation and not forgetting the most important factor in her life…her bed. Spiritually, church? Well, that’s still in question.

In the next five years, Tamlin sees herself trying to or making a success of her life.  She says: “As long as I am happy with whatever I’m doing the rest will fall into place. My career is top priority.”

Goals for the future? To have a successful career as a journalist and to acquire a degree in music, as well as to perform in front of thousands of people.

Book Review: The Taxi Driver’s Daughter by Julia darling

The Taxi Driver’s Daughter is about a family who grow to be strangers they then rail against each other and they each find their respective retreats. Caris is the insubordinate, chaotic daughter of Mac and Louise who is busy playing truant from school and get involved in an exotic love affair with George who she meets at the highly symbolic oak tree. George is Caris’ `prince’ who was born in riches. Caris’ former friend Margaret has teamed up with the school bully Layla. Their relationship is based solely on the foundation of hating Caris according to these allies Caris would be the devil if she were a religion. Stella, Caris’ sister with her hair pulled back and her face polished with concealer manages to escape a punishing, threatened regime of school work and cleaning.  Grandmother Nana Price sleeps  in the windowless box room, will all the other abandoned memories that remains of their dreams.

This is a story about a 15-year old Caris and her family told in a manner that verges on the absurdist as a drily comic with an eye for the ridiculous. Caris’ mother is sent to prison for stealing a shoe from Fenwick’s (actually, the prison sentence was for hitting a policeman with it). Since Caris is an adolescent, her preoccupations are elsewhere, or seem to be. She is more bothered regarding the Margaret and Layla situation they constantly knock her down then throw her shoes in a tree, and with George, the posh boy with whom she hangs around with when she’s meant to be at school.

Julia Darling’s writing is inventive and quirky that this slender material becomes a novel of glee, charisma and innovation.  From the very first sentence – `Mac drives like a man in a pot of treacle’ – you can tell you’re in the hands of someone with a sharp eye for the bizarre, tangential detail that makes any picture into one of authenticity and ecstasy. Darling’s novel is emotional portrayal of a family struggling to co-exist. Their dreams of a better life collide with one another. Louise and Stella blame Mac for all that went wrong, whilst Caris despises everything and everyone. She’s sick of hearing how the family needs to pull together to cope. Mac doesn’t know what to say to her; her teacher is at a loss; he even struggles to convince himself that school will help

The characters of The Taxi Driver’s Daughter don’t call upon us to feel passionately for them but they do demand our thorough understanding.  Form a very personal perspective, Darlings novel was rather moving as I could relate to Caris’ character tremendously. I also have a very big family just like Caris, what’s more is when I first started out at high school I was also bullied by seniors just like Caris.

The novel has changed many things in my life once I have read it, it has made me realise that there is always hope out there, and that you should never give up easily. There are always people out there that are worse off than you.