Angie has always considered Fremantle home so, when she returns from travelling overseas, she is drawn to live there.
Sharing a house, working in a coffee shop and drifting in the tide of the harbour town, Angie begins to develop a sense of self, an ego which is built up and diminished over again. Darcy, the man she has slept with once but longed for both before and since, is one of the keys to her happiness or lack of it.
Don’t be fooled, though, that this is in any way a love story or even a light romance. Cappuccino Diva is a story of self discovery, of self belief and self absorption. As the novel unfolds, Angie grows in a manner whcih is both endearing and believable.
This is also a book about a place – Fremantle. The port city, forever struggling to be more than a suburb of Perth, is an entity that those who have spent time there have to love. Author Samantha Ellen Tidy captures the elements of Fremantle witha precision which will make those who have lived there home sick. The houses, the cafes, the hotels and – most importantly – the people, fill the pages with the life that is Fremantle.
Cappucino Diva was runner up for the T.A.G. Hungerford Award in 2000 and is the first publication of Tidy’s fledgeling publishing venture, Black Coffee Press. You can learn more about the Press, and about Cappucino Diva, by visiting the company’s website, where teachers will also find access to ideas for using the novel in the classroom.
Cappuccino Diva, by Samantha Ellen Tidy
Black Coffee Press, 2003